


It All Happened One Long Morning

by Rider450



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Available on FF.NET, Elsewhere Fic, Gen, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28896066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rider450/pseuds/Rider450
Summary: In the early-to-mid-11940s, an American man and a machine lifeform come to learn that their mutual loathing for one another is far exceeded by their shared fears of a world greater than themselves, where life is cheap-especially theirs.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Introduction

**Things have gotten worse. The weather has been getting colder, and I have been hearing noises I recognize less and less.  
  
There isn’t a single soul out here, not even a ranger or an Indian. Half the fruit I find now is rotten, and I’ve turned towards fishing yet even that opened its own can of worms. All that’s left is my wallet, a pen, this notebook, my shirt and the upper half of my sweatpants.  
  
I miss going to have a drink. I don't think I'll find a way home, so I just hope that I can find some help or die.  
  
I don’t even know how much time ~~have passe~~ it’s been since my last entry. I've just begun to reflect on how much my life sucks now, even though I used to say I hate my life back in the day. Now I wish I could have someone to say that to, but everything is either a plant, a fish or it's trying to kill me.  
  
Is this what deployment would’ve been like?**

* * *

The man heard a bang in the distance, swiftly retracted his pen, and flipped back through the few pages of his sketchbook the moisture hadn’t yet smudged: some were desert sketches, fewer were empty left for him to write down his coming days.  
  
After a few moments of staring, he closed his torn-up notebook, and hid it in a rickety moisture-covered drawer, sliding it right under a small pocket knife he’d brought with him from times more familiar. Paper, he’d learned the hard way, didn’t take too kindly to water; and when raindrops could seep from the seams in a roof of haphazardly gathered pieces of scrap metal and gadgets found lying around, that was a problem. He braced himself, turned to his side, and tucked himself under a bed of leaves.  
  
_I don’t even need to cry...not that I can anymore._  
  
"Oh crap.. it's that damn sound again."  
  
A mechanical buzz resonated across the meager space of the shelter, depriving him of any rest he may have been hoping for. He wrestled his heavy eyelids open, stood up, and started shaking in the cold. This wasn't the first time he had heard that sound; and apparently, wouldn't be the last for a long time.  
  
He quietly snuck towards the hole that barely reached his height that he had for an entrance, pushed out the discolored block of wood that served as his door, and searched the rainy forest ahead of him to find the source of that infernal noise. After a quick moment of reflection, the man had made out the culprit through the mist to be what appeared to be a small hunk of metal drawing increasingly closer to him.  
  
It was identical to many he had seen before. Short stubby body, tiny legs, large feet, spherical head, no neck. They oddly resembled clockwork toys. Oddly enough, he could tell, its face was directed away from him. The moment its head turned around, however, its eyes went from green to red as it leapt at the man. A wave of fear and irritation thicker than the rain washed over his grimacing face, and he slowly retreated to the door.  
  
He was already feeling tired enough as it is; he thought to himself, " _Ah, great. Killer toys: now with a chance of.. shit, I forgot the phrase."_ and snuck off to his side with the cold wind blowing in his ear to find the nearest pebble, and threw it in the machine’s general direction.  
  
With a cramp, he tripped and his arm wobbled. The pebble shot past its target, and slammed into a tree branch. Hands on the ground and cold rain on his face, the man kept staring at the mass of steel and copper that drew closer and closer to him, and raved with a scowl. “The fuck did I-ha-ha- _kah_ ,” he coughed, “the fuck did I to you this time?!”  
  
The mechanical trespasser leapt within a few yards of him, splashing mud over his ear. The man, drawing one breath after the other, grabbed the next rock he could find, stood himself up, and yelped as he slammed the machine’s face in from the side with a loud thwack. The recoil sent him spinning, and he’d slid off to the side just in time to hear the machine’s metal fist whizzing through the air, close to dislocating his shoulder.  
  
The trees and the ground faded around him, and his head weighed like an anchor pulling the rest of his body down as he powered through a stretch of mud and puddles. His breath drew short, and his joints ached as if his bones had been run through a meat grinder. He turned back to look at his enemy, charging at him once more.  
  
_What is this angry Chef Boyardee can fucking doing here? Looking for a group shower?_  
  
Lungs tight with fright, the lone man lifted his rock one last time, barely able to hear the rain and the machine’s whir over his delirious panting, and threw it. “Hail fuckin’ Mary.” he quietly whispered, and clenched his teeth, holding his hands up.  
  
The pebble hit the machine’s artificial eye, and broke through its glass with a shatter. Its joints quickly began to spasm, and it started shaking. The machine’s head banged against the wet loam and rolled on its side, sinking into a puddle. Sparks flew in the air, and a loud zap sounded from the now deactivated hunk of metal. _Straight to the liquid, wait...  
  
...the phrase I forgot was ‘liquid sunshine’. Goddamn it._  
  
The tightness in the man’s chest finally vanished. He cleaned his ear with rainwater, returned to his shelter for comfort from the storm, and put the makeshift door back to its place. He returned to sleep, lying down on his damp bed, hoping to not be distracted -or threatened- again. Or at least, not in his sleep.


	2. Unexpected Encounters

Was it a new day, or not? It made no difference—the sun never budged, and that was how he knew the world was not quite the same.  
  
The bed he made was extremely uncomfortable at first, but he had to get accustomed to it after going to sleep on it so many times, especially when the only alternative was to lie down on the hard ground. A bed frame would’ve been better than this.  
  
It seemed to be the start of a typical day.. under the circumstances, of course. The storm had ended, and the rain was over as well. The ambience was rather warm. The man got up from his bed, grabbed his knife, pushed his shelter's door, and snuck out for the nearest lake. Despite improving since his arrival in a world entirely strange to him, he would still take an impractically long time to arrive there from his shelter, and it would sometimes leave him worrying about it, if only because of paranoia.  
  
He began to sprint across the forest, hopping over tree trunks and rocks. From tree to tree, he followed those whose trunks he carved shapes into.  
  
Once he made it there, he began to rinse as quickly as possible, and kept looking around him. He was completely alone, which ment that a surprise attack from an animal, or a machine, was never out of the question.. only to get surprised by.. neither.  
  
His eyes widened in a double take, as he stared at something unusual, even after he’d seen his fair share of killer tin cans straight out of a 1950s B-movie.  
  
It looked… almost like a decaying human corpse, and yet it certainly wasn’t.  
  
A metallic human-like object lay amidst the monotonic bushes. He couldn't help but try to reason with himself as to what he was looking at.  
  
What is this? Is this some sort of scenario where everybody’s turned into a dead robot copy of themselves?  
  
He hesitatingly stepped closer to inspect it, and found a disproportionately large blade attached to its back. The weapon was ornated with various symbols and letters that were alien to him. It looked fine as a work of art, yet its handle was so short one could question whether there would be any sane reason to use it.  
  
"This thing's edges are blunter than a butter knife!" he muttered to himself, quietly enough to avoid gathering unwanted attention, yet barely loud enough to hear his own voice and keep himself sane.  
  
He grabbed the metal body's hand with his own and it felt cold to the touch. Unexpectedly for him, as he lifted it, despite its heavy weight, it seemed as if the entire arm attached to it had joints.  
  
"An artificial human?"  
  
Footsteps made a sound in the distance. He didn't have time to think rationally anymore, and panic took control of him. He gripped his knife tightly and began to run away from where the sounds seemed to come from. Everything became but a fading blur as he ran for his life, hoping nobody would take notice of him.  
  
All he could think of for the next couple of hours or so, in between marathons across rock, dirt and puddles in the forest wasteland, was whether he was being tracked down, and whether somebody had read the contents of his notebook. Things are gonna go to shit if somebody finds out I was here!  
  
After a moment, his fears got the better of him, and he prepared to turn around and head to his mostly-secluded shelter, to grab his pen and notebook.. right when he heard a startling deep, hulking voice.  
  
It was unintelligible. It seemed to be a coherent language, but it was completely impossible for him to understand. It sounded vaguely Asian, but he could not distinguish a word of what it was saying. He did, however, deduce from the tone that it was somewhat aggressive.  
  
He jumped instantly, and let out a high-pitched scream "AAAHH!" right on the spot, and closed his eyes, anticipating the instant of his quick death at a machine's hands. This lasted for quite some time, until he looked around, to see where it was coming from.  
  
It turned out.. to be another machine, but even worse. Bigger, bulkier, and scarier. This is going to keep getting worse, won't it..  
  
He frowned, looking up in horror. The machine was at least twice his size, and definitely many more times better armored than he was in his unchanged clothes from home.  
  
He tiptoed back, holding up his knife when he saw the machine leaping at him with an axe. The first blow was targeted at his head, but he dodged it by the skin of his teeth, rolling on the floor. His knife was, however, hit, and sent flying in pieces. "GOD!" he screamed, looking at his muddied up clothes. He tried to get back up and continue to run for another couple of hours, as exasperated as he was, but that did not last for long, as he felt a strong pull on his leg. He turned to look at it; it was another machine.  
  
 _Jesus Christ, I must be really fucking incompetent at life. Why the hell are they trying to kill me anyway?_  
  
He looked back at the oversized, intimidating metal bully, and was surprised, yet relieved to see that it had quit trying to attack him, then he remembered that he was still being dragged to who knows where, by a tin can like countless others he's had to disable in one way or another and tried to struggle, only in vain. As he let out a deep sigh of despair, he found himself amidst a large gathering of machines..  
  
 _What the hell is this? Why would they need houses?_  
  
The man began to notice that he was being dragged into a rundown village of sorts, with rudimentary shelters and houses surrounding him, made of various bits of wood, metal, plants, and rock.  
  
Some of them, had chimneys that were emitting thick clouds of smoke, which supposedly caused the unusually bitter smell in the air.  
  
There were machines, in large numbers, however they were.. strange. Some of them wore hats, others wore outfits, and none of them directly tried to attack him, as they seemed to whisper among themselves and stopping whatever they were doing to look at him. He could not make out anything they were saying, let alone understand the incoherent streams of sounds, and simply hoped for the best.  
  
 _Well, maybe they want to be friends with me, and they have no social skills? This doesn't sound bad. Not bad. Not bad at-_  
  
He turned his head up from its lying position, to find that he was being dragged towards a wide open area with.. gallows.  
  
All the machines gathered around and seemed to stare emptily at him with red eyes, yet they did not move an inch.  
  
 _Shit! I must be getting the death sentence for murder against sentient tin cans!_  
  
"Uhh.. wait! Stop this! I don't want to die! I'm a free American man! I had no idea I was committing murder! I didn't know this was occupied territory!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, against the eerie silence. The machine that was dragging him through the floor turned to look at him for an instant, and his expression almost changed to one of relief, right when it turned back towards the gallows and continued its trajectory, without its grip on his leg loosening, even slightly. He whispered "You have to stop! I was merely defending myself!" in a fit of despair, to no avail. Finally, it was time as they reached their destination. A few more machines came to hang him, and they raised the rope up and high. The man held on with all of his strength for dear life while choking. It was then, his entire life flashed before his eyes, while his legs were shaking intensely. He began to accept the inevitable, and closed his eyes.  
  
 _Guess I had it comin’ after what happened before all of this._  
  
Then he was dropped alive.  
  
The man hit his head against the ground, and grunted in mind-numbing pain.  
  
Someone, or some **thing** , had spoken in that machine language.  
  
He could make the sound of a machine stepping closer to him. A mechanical whining was growing increasingly louder to his ears. Finally, a rather small figure popped into the corner of his vision. It was a machine with.. glasses?  
  
"Uh.. am I being spared here?"  
  
He quickly began to frown and stare blankly into its eyes as they flashed, and a strange series of beeps emanated from it, instead of a robotic voice like he was used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully i will rewrite this one later


	3. Interesting Meeting

The beeping continued for a while, until it had already stopped to confuse him and it simply bored him to stay in the same position and watch lights flash and beeps sound, when the small machine finally seemed to break out of it.  
  
" _Hello. It seems you are a human speaking an old world language known as English."_ A strange robotic yet mostly comprehensible voice was finally heard for the first time in, well, what seemed like days, were it not for the unshifting daytime sky.  
  
The man was somewhat relieved to be understood, and stuttered before uttering a sentence in a rather weak voice. "Y-y-yes, that's right.."  
  
 _"What place do you originate from again?"_  
  
The man quickly smiled in relief, and replied "Like I said to these, uhh.. what do you call them? Robots? People?-"  
  
" _I do not know exactly, but I believe a rough translation to your tongue would be that of 'machine lifeforms'."_ The machine unexpectedly interrupted him.  
  
"Wow, that sure is a creative name. You know, many things are also called ma-"  
  
 _"What. Place. Do. You. Originate. From?!"_  
  
The man was, once again, startled by this interruption. _Shit, I just remembered, these motherfuckers still mean business!_  
  
"I'm from the 21st century United States of America! I just want to go home! I have no idea why I ended up here!" the man rapidly answered in fear.  
  
The machine lept backwards, as if it had just realized something went wrong. It turned towards the rest of the colony, and looked like it was announcing something to them. Immediately afterwards, it returned to the man.  
  
 _"Follow me. I have something to show you."_  
  
"Uhh.. I mean, if I'm leaving this place, then why not?", he said, as he tried to get up while shaking and fidgeting. He walked slowly behind the machine, and as he turned his head to look aside, he quietly observed hundreds of basic structures pass by, occupied by more machines with odd fashion tastes. Underwear as shirts, shoes as hats, and gloves on feet were the _tamer_ things he had seen. He desperately contorted his face, in an attempt to hold in the resulting laughter, and turned straight back to the machine, which was not paying heed to any of it. He found himself then out of the settlement's limits, and watched unusual structures, such as stone pillars covered in moss, along with massive boars wandering about. He crouched and hid behind trees to stay away from their view, if only because their size was intimidating, but the machine did not seem to notice him, or them.  
  
They eventually found themselves far away from everyone else, and the machine simply stopped.  
  
"So.. am I free to go?" the man blurted out without thinking, as he looked back at the town, that seemed to be a mile away from their current location.  
  
His question was met with empty silence, until the machine bounced in place, and an enormous trapdoor opened, revealing a tunnel leading downwards, and a very long ladder. Slowy, the machine climbed down, followed by the man, who was growing worried, but was still intrigued enough to find out where they were heading.  
  
Finally, they reached the bottom. The machine opened a series of large doors, and the man looked around to see a dark, bluish facility.  
  
The heavy air carried with it the smell of smoke and rotting plants. Control panels were all over, with screens, tubes and wires taking up most of the ceiling. Tinted glass tubes were on the walls, with lifeless bodies that did not look like anything a loving God would create inside, hovering motionlessly.  
  
The man's eyebrows rose, his eyes shifted everywhere to make out all the details of what he was seeing. He could almost hear his own pulse growing faster and louder than the machine's whirring. _What the everloving fuck is this?!_  
  
For the first time in hours, the bespectacled stubby took notice of him again. It turned around, facing him, and it talked to him.  
  
 _"This, is an alien spacecraft that had crashed on this planet thousands of years ago. All the bodies you see here are of its creators, and all of them are dead."_  
  
These words sharply smacked the man back into reality from falling into paranoia; he looked back at the machine, which was standing still.  
  
The man drew a heavy breath, blinked and quietly chuckled. "…They look like dicks." the man remarked on their appearances, in a half-hearted attempt at humor.  
  
 _"..Yes. I believe they do bear a certain resemblance to the human penis."_  
  
He gazed in shock at the machine's face for several moments. _You must be very fun, dickhead._  
  
The machine walked down a staircase, up to a control panel in front of the man, and turned around.  
  
 _"Do you know what this is?"_  
  
He went slightly closer, and stepped down the stairs to take a closer look. He tried to guess in his mind what the strange device would be for on this alien ship, but after what seemed like an eternity of fruitless pondering, gave up. "No, not really. I'm not familiar with technology made by aliens from outer space." he grumped with a frown, with a sarcastic tone.  
  
 _"I have been studying alien technology for years, human-_  
  
"It's Derrick. My name's Derrick. I'm an individual. I have a name."  
  
 _"As aliens and humans alike have always been a source of fascination to me for different reasons, I have taken pride in developing a greater understanding of human culture, thought and language as well as aliens' efficient technology, which, in fact, is also the reason I could understand your English. It so happened, that I had found on this particular ship, which I believe to be a minor interstellar cruiser, a device that may be capable of opening rifts between different timelines and dimensions. I'd experimented tens of times with it and its systems, but I had never managed to retrieve any object from another world. And I believe that you, Derrick… have been mistakenly pulled out of your own world, into ours. This universe.. may have wildly different natural laws from yours. It is nearly a miracle that you have survived, let alone made it this far."_  
  
The man was frozen in place, trying to process what the machine had just said. He was deeply shocked; yet it finally all made sense to him. He did not question too often the reason of his appearance in this strange land, because he never thought he would find an answer. His eyes opened widely, his jaw dropped, and he moved back to sit down on the stairs. His palm reached for his head, as he finally came to understand what he had just heard.  
  
"So you're saying.. that the reason I'm here.. is because you were **messing with technology you don't understand jack shit about?** " he yelled in frustration. At that point, he was ready to strangle the machine with his own two hands for what happened to him. "You piece of **shit!** For all I know, I have no life left to live because you couldn't read a fucking diagram!" He walked closer to the machine, and pointed his finger at its face in a threatening manner as he scowled.  
  
The machine returned his stare. _"Derrick. The factors involved in these matters are highly complex and involve a plurality of variables."_  
  
His mouth twitched, almost as if to say something, before he could put his words together. "I've watched my own friends tell me they don't give a flying fuck about me. I have watched them pull off with flying colors everything I've screwed up from high school to college, while I ended up mopping floors and scanning barcodes at Safeway."  
  
He closed in on the stubby and bared his teeth. "People I thought were my friends told me that they wouldn't give a shit if Al-Qaeda flew a plane into my **face**. I had finally built up the courage to leave it all behind, hang myself. But I turned back, and thought I'd find one thing in this life that isn't fucked to the bone! **One last thing!** But no, Mr. Boltbucket Biggins tore spacetime a new asshole, brought about a cave-in while I was trying to forget about my clusterfuck of a life, and whisked me to a place where I recognize no one, and everything wants my ass on a plate. So let's get the plurality of your screws on the ground, huh? See which one of us has 'em looser in the head." he started shaking and threw his hand down, as if threatening to beat the machine with it.  
  
The machine, overwound from the man's ranting, ran at him and shoved him with its hands, nearly knocking him down, and dragging him back down to earth. "Ow, what the **fuck**!" he said as he held on tightly to his ribs. He groaned in pain as he leaned against the floor, screaming and yelping.  
  
 _"Do not attempt violence against me. I did not try to harm you intentionally, and if it comes down to it, I will defend myself if I have to."_


	4. The Trail Begins

The groaning continued for a seemingly long tiresome while, as the machine remained still and continued to look at the man, who was repeatedly attemping to get back up. He took then several deep breaths before standing up once again.  
  
"Shit.. I shouldn't have done that." he muttered to himself while dusting himself from his fall.  
  
"Fuck… so what now?" he asked in a weak, worried tone, still feeling pain in his lower chest and lightly moaning.  
  
 _"As I am to be held responsible by my settlement for your troublesome presence, I must inform you that there may be a solution, and that I will aid you in returning to where you came from."_ The machine responded in its regular monotone, completely unfazed by what just happened. _Wow, this tin can truly is the master of the art of nearly not giving a shit at all!  
  
"Most of us machines are connected to a large, sprawling, worldwide network. I know, because I, and all other machines you have encountered since your visit, were either a part of it or used to be. I, however, have remained disconnected from it for many years."_  
  
The man raised an eyebrow and titled his head, baring some of his teeth. "How long? 2 years? 3? 7? 10? 20? 70?-  
  
 _"My internal system clock shows that I have first disconnected within the range of 6 years ago. However, I have underwent maintenance more than once that had required it to stop counting time since then. Therefore, I can not answer your inquiry with absolute certainty."_  
  
"When-  
  
 _"Back to our previous subject, there is a component central to the network, from what little information I currently know, that possesses superintelligence, controlling all other nodes, directly or otherwise. This entity, a concept if you will, could conceivably possess the required information –and resources- to construct a spacetime bridge capable of safely leading you back to your own reality."_ the machine went on without skipping a beat, completely ignoring the man's attempt at formulating a question.  
  
"And.. when was '6 years ago'? Because I could've sworn that back then, the height of technology was two thousand dollars for a computer that would crash the moment you inserted a floppy. Not this... nightmare junkyard of a forest we're in." the man quipped sarcastically. Although he was genuinely curious as to what time it was, he did not think it would matter much, being that he was in a different reality altogether.  
  
 _"Today is May 4th, 1194-"_  
  
The machine's eyes quickly flashed between green and white, emitting a high pitched buzz.  
  
"What the fuck?" _Y2K much?  
  
"An error has occurred within my system clock. What I can say with certainty is that, six years ago is sometime between January 1st, 11934 and December 31st, 11943."_  
  
The man's mind was racing to make sense of what he had just heard.  
  
"So now, **you don't even know what damn time it is yourself?** " he blurted out, frustrated.  
  
 _"To a certain degree. However, it is certain that today is between January 1st, 11940 and December 31st, 11949."_  
  
"Ho..ly.. shit." The man's eyes widened, and his jaw dropped for a few moments before he cleared his throat and sighed. He had forgotten the pain he had felt earlier after being hit, and his expression changed to one of calm frustration, with a slight scowl, looking the machine squarely in the eye.  
  
He let out a sigh, before trying to regain his composure.  
  
"That's a lot further in the future than I expected.. Alright, so where do we start from here? Do we go to my shelter or something?" the man asked while scratching the back of his head, and looking at the exit of the alien ship.  
  
 _"We are heading further into the forest, towards my estimate of our target's location. Follow me, and we should be able to proceed without any further complications."_ the machine said while rapidly hopping back up the stairs, and going through the doors towards the ladder leading out of the alien craft.  
  
The man followed it, and although anxious as to where exactly they were headed, he knew that he would not be able to figure his way out of this hellhole on his own, and internally scolded himself for getting caught up in this mess in the first place. _You dumb fucking piece of shit! Why didn't you just kill yourself? This is just like you. Now shut the fuck up, this isn't the time to hate on yourself. Focus on getting the fuck out of here, so that then you can maybe, just maybe, re-evaluate your goddamn life when.. actually, **if** you get home._  
  
The man was lost in his internal monologue for what seemed like an hour, when in reality, it was merely a minute. By the time he snapped out of it, he found the machine halfway up the ladder, climbing.  
  
"Wait up! I'm still here!" he shouted from the floor, followed by him running through the hallway and getting on the ladder as fast as he could while hungry. He followed the machine, which was already on the surface at that moment, through the trap door. He looked around to see it, but had lost track of it, instantly turning to panicking again before noticing footprints on the dirt leading further into the woods, and laughing at himself.  
  
 _I'm a fucking idiot._  
  
He took the first step, and heard the sound of glass breaking and electric noises, not too far away. _Motherfucker! He's gonna drop dead!_  
  
He raced as fast as his wimpy legs allowed him to, following the trail of footprints and avoiding trees. "What the fuck is going on in there? I'm coming!"  
  
Sweat was running down his pale face, whilst the sound of metal pounding got more intense. _I'm not lettin' this shit go! I'm either going home, or six feet under the ground this time!_  
  
He tripped by hitting his foot against a bush while looking straight ahead of himself, leaving his foot with several minor cuts. Not that he was too concerned by the ensuing pain, he got up quickly and looked to his right.  
  
" **What the fuck? Is this cyber-rape?** "  
  
The man was horrified. Not ten feet away from him, was the machine who was talking to him just now, getting attacked by a larger one. The large machine stood out to him as uncanny; its feet were extremely long compared to the rest he had known, its hands were eerily large yet had exposed sparking wires. It had shattered what remained of the other one's glasses in its grip, whilst it was on the ground, trying to get back up with dents all over its body.  
  
He inhaled deeply from his mouth, frowning. His instinctive reaction was to flinch, causing him to trip and fall again, which fortunately led him to narrowly avoid a sharp piece of metal zooming past him. _Holy shit! That could've cut my head in half!_


	5. Bigger Troubles

The man lied on the floor, confused and panicked.  
  
His only partner seemed to be taking punches better than he could ever hope to, and once more, he felt powerless. _Fuck. Well, he’ll be out of service for sure. There ain’t no getting out of this one. I might as well join in and get my face pounded._  
  
He turned over, to find the sharp bit of metal stuck lodged in the trunk of a tree.  
  
 _Wait. Holy fucking shit._  
  
 ** _I know what I can do!_**  
  
In an adrenaline-fueled rush, he ran to pull it out, and picked it up. He then looked back to see the friendly machine try to roll over to dodge, as the bully raised its elbow, and its hand began to glow electrically..  
  
 **“Hey,fat boy!”**  
  
The man threw the plate at the large machine’s exposed wiring, cleanly cutting it. _Living in the shit makes you learn badass stuff, doesn’t it?_  
  
The plate was then stuck between its gears, leaving it unable to control its arm. It struggled to gain back control, while uttering strange words of its own language, eventually trying to twist it back into position with its other hand. It seemed to scream, or at least, do as convincing an imitation of a scream as it could, as it ended up breaking its arm in half. The man watched silently with a smug look on his face, believing himself to have defeated it, only to once again panic as it turned its body and began to charge at him, throwing its severed forearm at the tree trunk behind him from four yards away.  
  
“What the hell?!” he screamed, with a frown on his pale face, lightly covered in dirt. He held on to his old striped shirt, and covered his eyes with his other arm as debris and dust fell over his head, making him cough lightly. The machine grabbed onto the dislocated, now even further shattered arm and raised it high. _Fuck, I have to make a move now!_  
  
The man ran under his enemy’s upper body with what was left of his strength, groaning and clenching his fist to forget about the pain from his foot injuries, back towards the closest thing he had to a friend. He looked down while wiping his face with his shirt’s sleeve, to see it dented, trying to get up.  
  
“ _I’m… functional….”_ the short stubby muttered, in its typical robotic voice.  
  
The duo were shaken, quite literally and physically, by a shock wave the larger machine had created after bouncing on the ground while turning around to face them.  
  
“ **Oh shit!I don’t wanna die!** ” he cried for a moment, until he noticed the wide tree trunk behind the machine, finally cracked by the machine’s shock waves. It slowly fell on the latter’s head, crushing it and leaving it slumping on the floor, while he was trying to roll his stubby friend down a slope.  
  
“ _Take cover!”_  
  
In a quick reflex, he ducked as he heard the sound of an explosion, with unidentifiable parts flying away.  
  
After simply zoning out while screaming with his eyes closed in a fetal position for a good while, the man, finally relieved of all the panic and stress that ensued in the moment, leaned over to look back at the scene, now covered in a cloud of smoke and small flames. Bits of scrap metal were scatted all over the floor, and the surrounding trees and plants were all shaking intensely.  
  
 _What in the name of fuck was all that? Did I become a hero or something?_  
  
The man was lost in his thoughts, trying once again to fully process all the events that had happened since he woke up. _Today is the weirdest day of my life. I saw a dead metal corpse with a giant butter knife, I ran to a village where everyone wanted to hang my ass, and-_  
  
 _“Help me get up.”_ The machine said, smacking him straight back into reality.  
  
The man lied down with his back on the grass, groaning out of hunger and frustration. “I’m too tired… and hungry… fuck, I’m dying.”  
  
 _“Your condition may only worsen if you do not take action.”_ It turned its head towards his, while trying to hold onto the ground with its hands to prevent it from rolling further.  
  
“Fuck.. Ahhh… Ahhh..” The man continued groaning with his hand on his chest, wincing. He passed his other hand over his muddied tracksuit pants. “Shit. Ahh.. I gotta do the laundry if I get home. This is gonna suck. Why do I always..  
  
 _STOP. GET. THE FUCK. UP._  
  
The man quickly rose from his position, and looked around. “I gotta eat.. gotta find a moose.” He coughed. “Or a fish, fuck. Survivalist Derrick in.. action.” he muttered to himself while clearing his throat.


	6. Nature's Showdown

He held on to his chest, while slowly walking away. The machine was laying still on the grass and dirt, turning to look at him.  
  
 _“Do not wander too far away. You may encounter much more dangerous hostiles.”_  
  
He kept repeating these words to himself, trying to figure a plan out.  
  
 _Okay. Some trees are here, there’s a moose or two.. fuck I’m dumb, there’s a wide river up ahead. Why the hell did I think hunting down a moose with my bare hands was a good idea?_  
  
He slowly stepped closer to avoid making a sound, although he would’ve liked to get this over with as quickly as possible in his current state.  
  
The ground seemed to shake for a moment when he was within arm’s reach of the river, and he almost lost balance before quickly regaining his stature. _I am not OK with an earthquake! This is the worst time!_  
  
The machine seemed to say something in the distance, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was and didn’t bother asking, as he was busy enough trying to survive.  
  
He squatted, spreading his legs out as much as he could in case an earthquake was coming, to avoid falling over into the river. _Fuck. I never thought I’d fish with my bare hands instead of a knife. Today is the shittiest day of my life._  
  
The man turned around to look for anything he could use, but nothing came to mind, letting out a sigh of frustration before sticking his hands into the running water and hoping for the best. _I better not get some parasite out of this._  
  
It didn’t take too long before he felt something moving upstream, and caught a glimpse of a mackerel passing by. He quickly took a firm grasp of it, and dropped it by his side. A shape vaguely resembling a fish appeared as well, and he struggled to pull it out, only to find out that it was an aquatic machine lifeform. _Jesus Christ! Is there any place these damn robots aren’t? They better not be making nanomachines, or else I’ll be gone before I know it._  
  
The man threw it behind him, further than the mackerel he had gotten earlier. He was mildly surprised to see it shake on the dirt for a few moments, before coming to a stop. _They don’t give up, I gotta give it to ‘em._  
  
He looked back at the water, and snagged another fish, which turned out to be a salmon. By then, he was feeling tired again, and slowly scrambled for some branches to start up a small fire. Time was moving along faster as he cooked the fish, and tried to boil some water by heating rocks up and pushing them into a water bowl of sorts, which he’d dug in the mud by the side of the river.  
  
He was then finally prepared to rest, to regain some energy. He let his head drop on the ground, turned it downwards and closed his eyes. _This hard work pays off, for now I guess. Hope there won’t be an earthquake, though._  
  
As soon as he was finally drifting into sleep, he was rudely awakened by the voice of his machine partner, left in an uncomfortable position. _“There are other machines, and animals incoming. You must immediately stand guard for the both of us.”_  
  
The man painstakingly opened his eyes and frowned, muttering vague curses to himself, and heard an intimidating bellow.  
  
He gasped and leaped backwards away from the river, making way for an oversized moose in front of him charging headfirst with its antlers at a pair of stubby-legged, glowing-red-eyed machines at arm’s length from the river, that would be indistinguishable from his partner were they not larger and wider than the man himself, hopping at it. The moose fiercely hit them with its antlers, scraping them and pushing them back with a loud metallic sound. They were knocked down and slammed each other with an equally loud ringing. The slightly bulkier-looking one stopped moving, flat on the ground, while the moose lost balance and fell on the ground. The other one, however, fell in the river. A loud splash covered the man’s pants, leaving him cold. It yelled alien-sounding words and sounded an electric zap while emitting sparks before the red glow in its eyes faded away, and it sank to the bottom of the water.  
  
The man blankly stared at the machine and the lying moose on the ground with a worried look, slowly stepping away. _Ookay.. Take it easy.. Slowly back away.. I don’t want any part of this…_  
  
The moose slowly got back up and turned its head towards the smaller machine, the latter looking the man in the eyes. Both of them had realized what was about to happen by then. _“Act quickly!”_ it shouted in a slightly more emotive voice than usual. The man began to hectically turn and look around, his arms and hands shaking madly. “ **I’m trying to think of something, shit!** ”  
  
It only took a few moments for him to stop thinking rationally in the heat of the moment. He rushed towards his machine, racing against the moose in an adrenaline frenzy and screamed “I’m gonna try to put you back right side up or something!” only to get shoved aside and knocked out screaming, with his vision faded. _Shitshitshitshitshit-Fuck, I’m hurt! Fuckfuckfuckfuck-_  
  
The man heard the moose bellow again, only this time it was because the moose was hurt by a.. purple orb full of electricity, coming from a four-legged machine about the size of a horse, stepping down of the remains of the destroyed enemy from the previous encounter. _Am I now dreaming up shit, or is this real?_  
  
Another, third sound was heard, before he could hear something big collapse. _What the hell? Did the short metal nerd I watched get bullied, now just kill a five hundred pound moose all by himself using magic?_  
  
He slowly tried to stand back up and recover from the blow, and it was only then that he saw the large four-legged machine hit his partner with its legs while running in his direction, propping it back up before unexpectedly stopping right in front of him, and turning back to head away.  
  
He remained still, dumbfounded. The events that had just played out were slowly being pieced together in his head, trying to form a coherent explanation.  
  
“What…the hell was that?” he asked.  
  
The short stubby then stepped closer to him. _“Local wildlife is having territorial disputes with a group of machines, thus why I always prefer to remain safe in my colony.”_ it explained, returning to its complete mechanical monotone.  
  
These last words raised an eyebrow. “So.. you wanted to leave your place to help me… why?”  
  
 _“I have always had a deep interest in humans, and their thought process. I tried to study the behavior of the human body for a long time. I preferred to keep you alive rather than dead so that I could observe how humans act. However, it was evident that the people of my colony would not be pleased with you remaining among us, therefore my only option is to help you return home.”_  
  
“Oh.. that actually.. makes sense.” he muttered without giving it much of a thought, before a sound emerged from underground, not unlike the one he heard when the ground began to shake earlier.  
  
A loud splash emerged from the river, and all kinds of colored lights blinded him as they popped out, while he tried to cover his face with his arm and lost balance once again, falling on his forearms.  
  
 _The fuck’s up now?_


	7. Going Deeper

Water, rocks, dirt, and metallic dust slowly settled on the surroundings of the ensuing splash. Grass was covered and branches were broken. A pair of thin, curvy metal spires jutted out of the water's surface. The adrenaline rush had ended, an opportunity the cuts on the man’s foot sharply seized to painfully remind the man of his earlier mishap running to save the machine after he’d fallen twice in a row.  
  
He grudgingly got up to the smell of murky water, and held his foot closer to take a look at the injuries. _Damn, these are small, but they’ll take way too much time to heal like this if they don’t get infected first. I-_  
  
The machine began leaping away, and the sound of its moving gears tore the man out of his thoughts.  
  
 _“Take cover from the electric projectiles!”_ These words zoomed through his head twice; first, as a stream of gibberish while he dropped his foot, and the second time, clicking in his head and driving him to look ahead. _No. No. No. Whatever it is, this is a bad time._  
  
A big, colorful red and blue orb of electricity was in front of his face, slowly closing him. Time had slowed down in his eyes, and at that very instant, he dodged to the left. He felt a severe pain in his chest for a moment afterwards, curling up and tightly holding it. _Can I ever.. get a **break**?! Stop!_  
  
He tried to regain his posture and looked forward. His vision, was getting blurry, but slowly regained its sharpness when he’d noticed two long machines resembling worms, or snakes, flying in mid-air, in defiance of gravity and all good judgment, above the draining river, one equipped with a steel drill, and the other with some odd apparatus that resembled a gun of sorts. They appeared to be composed of a large chain of circular smaller units, stuck to each other, with a black sphere in the middle surrounded by a yellow glow.. andtens of floating orbs of energy appeared out of the blue, slowly closing in on him, multiplying as the latter continued to fire them. _Holy.Jesus. Christ.I can’t take on this. I can’t. It’s just not possible._  
  
The man was unable to focus; he’d felt more overwhelmed than ever before, and the adrenaline rush, while active, no longer felt as empowering as it did even earlier when the man woke up. _This must be easy for that smart-ass tin can.. wait, where is he?_  
  
..And before he’d drowned in his thoughts, his mind suddenly snapped to the orb a mere six feet from himself. “Aawgh!” he gasped, after this sudden reminder that he was not allowed to stop, and fled to his right, turning to look, and found his machine partner silently looking at him, standing behind a tall pine tree, appearing completely indifferent to his fate.  
  
His fatigue-overrun mind raced to construct a sentence, and he’d uttered “ **Help me!** “ hoping for it to at least tell him something that could’ve helped. Instead, it remained motionless and stared at him, seemingly taking detailed mental notes as he ran in circles attempting to avoid an ever-increasing amount of projectiles directed solely at him.  
  
 _What an asshole. I went to save him **twice** , he better find someone else to bail him out the third time._  
  
The worms began to fly closer to him, while the projectiles had all but surrounded him. His face paled, covered in sweat in that one instant as he tried to figure an escape out. He looked back uphill, at the dense forest. _If I could just run fast enough.. they would lose me between the dense trees!_  
  
His eyes swiftly opened up, and he turned to the machine in that small instant, that was preparing to follow him back up. _Fuck off._ The man began to run as fast as his tired legs possibly could without sparing a single instant, and rushed back into the forest, looking back to find himself outrunning the projectiles, and.. his hunters going around him to surround him from the other side. He turned forward, only to find his view completely obstructed by wide flowing tubes of machinery hovering in front of him, waiting for a flurry of electric orbs to grill him alive, and he could only assume the stubby dented machine was idly watching, without a care in the world for what was to happen to him. _What a pretentious asshat._  
  
He turned around to face the bullets, and felt a sharp pain resonate in his head. _I could really use some damned safe sleep._  
  
In a poorly-coordinated attempt to crawl, he landed nose-first into the ground. The pain of an impending nosebleed sparked its way into his mind, causing him to draw a sharp breath through his teeth. He slipped downhill, away from the scene, toward the river. Partway down, he heard the telltale sound of energy striking metal- a sound this world had trained him to hear. He saw a tumult of colors reflected back at him from the shimmering grass. He desperately went on, refusing to stop for a moment if he was to save his hide.  
  
He looked up, to find the drill-equipped machine wobbling in its trajectory as if it were unstable downwards towards his spinal cord to tear him apart, while the other one could no longer fly under its own weight after the shocks presumably absorbed by the black sphere in its center that seemed to be a core of sorts, and he began to roll sideways hoping to dodge.  
  
After what felt like seconds, he’d lost control over his roll and began to slide and roll all over the slope, screaming and in a split second closed his eyes and held his breath before eventually splashing headfirst into the river, as the redirected current slowly carried him into the newly-created hole. He was tired senseless, to the point where he could not swim to save himself as the blurry, faded image of his machine partner looking at his helpless body, and the large driller ominously flying away appeared, while his eyesight slowly started to vanish. He fell through the tunnel and was wildly carried by the rushing current, his arms wildly swinging to keep him from slamming into a rock as he felt death oncoming for the next couple of seconds before he’d regained air, and his left arm hit a large rock the water rushed around out of a narrow hole in the dark. The cold, hard basalt under his back complemented the smell of minerals, and heavy machinery.  
  
He painstakingly crawled, holding on the slippery mud and stone under the running water, and lied down.  
  
He looked up.  
  
A faint orange glow showed the top of a large mineshaft, built within broad caves. Machines in the distance across a wide abyss, some as large as trucks, and others as small as his.. ex-partner, were striking rocks and extracting coal and other minerals from them, transforming them into clean, cubic blocks of white seemingly magically and dropped them onto heavy carts before sending them away on rails; all of this, combined with their chanting of the same, incomprehensible words from a language entirely foreign to the American added up to a restless cacophony that promised to never let him sleep, even in the cold underground.  
  
 _I wouldn’t mind dying that much, at this point._


	8. Mines and Migraines

The man’s eyes remained closed, as he lay down for a few minutes, grunting in pain and frustration from the freezing air after he’d been completely submerged in the cold water, his jaws shaking with a will of their own.  
  
 _I have gone through a lot of shit for one day- wait, fuck me, I don’t even know how long it’s been._  
  
 _I can barely feel my damn fingertips._  
  
He looked to his side. Although he couldn’t see much in the dark, or smell anything other than the blood seeping from his own nose, the mining machines appeared to be going about their business, continuing to dig and chant at the same pace and ignoring him. _I can’t be assed to move now.. I genuinely wish I could’ve just died._  
  
His eyes then shifted to the water still flowing from the hole, and falling down into the abyss, making a barely audible rustling compared to the unending mechanical sounds of the machines.  
  
A smudgy outline of a familiar shape seemed to emerge from within the hole. He tried to move his body slightly closer to take a better look and discern what it was from its highlights, but quickly regained its former position when he felt himself almost slipping out. _I almost shat my pants! Holy shit!_  
  
It kept moving upwards, until it revealed itself in the pale orange light to be another strange type he’d never seen until then; it could fly as did the long, wormy types whose encounter led him here, but unlike them, it consisted of the body of the most common type of their kind; it resembled those that he had been encountering since his arrival to this world. Those, in hindsight, were the ones that worried him the _least._ But this one, however, had, instead of legs, a large propeller and a large gun attached to it. He tried to hide himself for a second, before it turned in his direction.  
  
 ** _OH GOD OH GOD NO-_**  
  
He knew he couldn’t have stopped it from spotting him; its eyes went from green to red, and its alarm rang before it shouted in an angry tone, followed by an eerie silence for what felt like an eternity instead of the chant the man’s ears were beginning to tune out.  
  
Before he could make a move, the other mining machines had all jumped and turned to face him with their eyes all glowing red, and the oft-heard sound of machine combat mode alarms going off—a sight that nearly drove him to soil himself this time. _Jesus Christ! I had all the time in the world to take a dump when I woke up today!_  
  
The man felt his pulse speed up so quickly that he could nearly feel his heart tearing itself apart, and his face grew paler and sweatier. He got up as quickly as safely possible, by tightly grabbing onto several rocks in the rough ground he was on. He looked down on the ground, to find the cuts on his numb feet covered in gunk he couldn’t quite make out, and a very uneven, unsafe terrain ahead of him. This was all interrupted by the sound of stone breaking and crashing behind him. He turned to the machines, and found a few of them throwing blocks of sizes ranging from smaller than a foothold, to large enough to crush him.  
  
In the blink of an eye, he’d seen a huge, smooth,shiny cube weakly reflecting the mineshaft lights, combined with the red from the machines’ eyes, crashed into the hole he’d fallen from. He could hear the basalt slowly cracking and sliding from the impact, as he jumped backwards screaming **“Waooh!”** by reflex, before landing and making a false step, and felt himself lose his touch with the ground, uncontrollably sliding into the dark pit.  
  
He was about to bust his vocal chords yelping, before his survival instincts kicked in and he held on to a small, but sturdy rock protruding from the edge. _I’m- Wait, I got it.Don’t fucking look down. Don’t fucking look down. Pull-_  
  
A dark, cubical smudge speeding through the air, crashed right where his head was, mere seconds ago.  
  
 _Is this a good or bad thing that I fell and didn’t get hit there?_  
  
Off the corner of his blurred vision, a slowly-approaching bright orb of energy pulses just like the ones he’d seen earlier fired from the flying machine’s gun. **_Oh shit!_**  
  
He felt a small burst of energy that let him grab on, and tried to pull himself up to save himself from his imminent doom, but his arms wouldn’t give in after he’d pulled himself halfway upwards, leaving him to look frantically for a bump in the black multi-layered basalt, and raised his right foot, pressed it against a small, granular rock instants before a loud zap and flash from under his feet flooded his senses. The uncomfortable stone he was standing on seemed to tremble slightly under the force of the impact, as he firmly held on to the wall while gasping for air, like a child being choked.  
  
He couldn’t get himself to look back out; his mind was overwhelmed, but he figured more pulses were being fired by looking at the purple dashes of light that appeared on the otherwise almost pitch-dark wall. He heard the sound of clanking gears and mechanical parts bouncing to his left, and took a few seconds to make the connection that the miner machines were running in his direction as well.  
  
He trudged for a few seconds as he heard more electric zap sounds and more lights flashed, closely watching his every step and not letting go of the cold, hard, rough rock by his side, with an extremely tight grimace on his face, breathing uneasily from his bloody, cold, numb nose with the added discomfort of a fever migraine, when another unexpected loud bang rocked the air, and boulders were heard crashing down from above, along with a few of them hitting the running red-eyed hunks of metal, who’d stopped in place to avoid being knocked out. Blinding sunlight suddenly filled the man’s surroundings, and revealed the same drill-equipped snaking worm who’d nearly tore his spinal cord open earlier, still wobbling and closing in on him. _Oh my god. Ten trillion goddamn things are happening all at once. **How do I keep up with all this shit?!**_  
  
 _Wait. There’s light! That means… **Look behind!**_  
  
He turned his head behind as he loosened his grip on the rocks by his side, and noticed the flyer dodging the shaky long, flexible airborne machine that had just burst in out of the blue, and several disorganized large balls of color and electricity dangerously close to his back, before he’d decided to dive and crawl away as fast as possible on the spot on the rocky path he could now see, albeit his vision was still growing blurrier by the minute, and his bloodshot eyes wearier, stopping right in front of a projectile passing by. The nauseating sounds of crashes, zaps, thunks and clunks all blended together in this wild fiasco of unstopping stressful running, dodging and hiding as he saw a pair of rocks in the wall covering up a hole, wobbling. _This better not be another shitty surprise, because **I’m just throwing myself off the cliff here and now if that’s what it is!**_  
  
He took a quick glance at what was around him. The miner machines were preparing to move once again after they’d decided the coast was clear, the flying machine was settling back in position to start firing, and the dreaded driller was turning around to strike him. _Fuck. I knew this would happen.F-_  
  
The man’s thoughts were interrupted by a voice, frustrating him even further. _“Derrick.”_ it said, but it quickly shifted his focus, for its familiarity made the previous events of the day blaze through his mind; it was his former guide, and he’d recognized it from its short stature, and all the dents and scrapes on its body. Standing high above in the tunnel and watching, no less. It started to speak to him, but its words were drowned out by the maddening noises of the miners’ gears and parts hitting the ground as they moved again –now about twenty feet from him– and he’d only made out one: _“acquaintance.”_  
  
 **“Wh-“** the man began to shout for a split second, before the rocks flew out of their position, pushed away by another, completely unexpected creature; a head that rolled incredibly fast in front of him, before stopping in the blink of an eye. Its appearance resembled a globe badly decorated to resemble a moon with a face, with its large circular white eyes, its two small holes for a nose and its wide grin, on an otherwise featureless grey sphere. He frowned and stared blankly in confusion. _The fuck? Oh.. it’s someone._  
  
…before it started to speak in a childish, friendly voice, immediately followed by an awkward scream as it realized they were both surrounded by an army of machines ready to pound them both into a fine pulp, and the little creepy-faced ball fell back into hiding, followed by the grumpy, wounded survivor who’d gotten into a thin, and dark tunnel right as they could hear rock being crushed and struck by pulses of energy; he’d started to smell dirt, stone and oil as he slowly made his way down, trying to follow the path of the racing creature but enjoyed the growing silence in his ears for a minute or so, until a large drill began to tear through the opening behind him, flinging pebbles and particles at him from behind.  
  
 _Why the fuck couldn’t I have taken my pointless break here instead of right in front of them earlier? What a retard I am._


	9. Through Green Eyes

**| << FAST REWIND**  
  
 _He was tired senseless, to the point where he could not swim to save himself as the blurry, faded image of his machine partner looking at his helpless body, and the large driller ominously flying away appeared, while his eyesight slowly started to vanish._  
  
The waist-high, beat-down machine stood still, staring at the man, almost invisible as he let himself get carried away by the water, turning to look at the long, flexible drill-spire drifting away in its trajectory; it seemed to be patrolling the surrounding area alone, despitehaving sustained quite some damage; half of the man-sized linked steel spheres that made up its snake-like structure were covered in cracks and emitting faint, white particles.  
  
It began to think out loud to itself.  
  
 ***TRANSLATION SOFTWARE ACTIVATED. Setting: ██████ to English.**  
  
 _“He was reckless.”_ it spoke to itself without a change in its usual electronic voice, and looked down for a moment before turning around.  
  
It internally organized the data it had collected over the course of the past few hours, its mechanical legs slowly hopping away uphill as it passed by the wreck of the two dead machines in the river bed and on its side, and that of the gunner worm that had inadvertently destroyed itself; it was slumping down on the ground beside the rotting corpse of the dead moose that was drawing flies and maggots in—giving off a stench that the stubby machine could not smell.  
  
Then, it stopped in front of a large, tall tree trunk blocking its way, that covered the burnt-up shrapnel of the blown-up machine the man had saved it from; compared to the stubby’s size, it seemed a mighty metal giant crushed under a force of nature. It began replaying the relevant memory file in its mind, as it remained in place looking at the hundreds of scattered and shattered bits of steel, wire and circuits left on the ground.  
  
The whirring sound of its inner workings, the rustling of the leaves along with the flow of the river, and the occasional zooming past of the shaking drill-spire–which cast a long shadow over the man’s former partner, the grass, and the debris—were the only sounds to be heard for miles in the otherwise silent woods, apart from the occasional boar roaming.  
  
It looked down, and something suddenly clicked in its mind; it was looking at a small metal plate covered in ash, the same one the man had thrown to save its life earlier.  
  
 _The man had helped me.. I suppose I should at least make some sort of attempt to aid him now._  
  
 _Perhaps I could speak to my old business acquaintance in the vicinity.. It would be preferable that I order a new internal system clock and outer body parts from him now either way._  
  
After a moment, it turned around and began to slowly make its way back, approaching the river as the grass rustled under its rusting brownish feet, before looking around to search for a path across the river. _It would take too much time to reach him. It seems that I could use the corpses of the dead units lying within range to construct a shortcut, however._  
  
While taking care to maintain its own balance on the slope by slowly shifting its legs back and forth against it, it pushed the corpse of the large machine that had fallen on the riverside, bit by bit,to roll down next to the short-circuited one that had already been lying down on the drained river bed, asmakeshift stepping stones to makeprecise hops across the wide gaps, and looked up to see the driller wonkily flying away into the distance and making a whirring sound, in the same general direction it was headed, and followed it. _It seems to have found a target… possibly the man._  
  
The stubby machine hopped forward, and after some time, began to go down a thin, curved rocky path outlined by various weeds and the decayingfragments of various metallic parts, the sound of its gears clunking reverberating off the tall, thickly spread out, short-branched pines of the forest as it headed closer to its destination.  
  
A few moments later, it reached a wooden, cracked trapdoor on the ground, surrounded by small bits and pieces of junk, to the front of a wide, thirty-feet-high, sprawling red-leafed oak tree reflecting strips of sunlight that stood out amidst the dense pines, with a sign attached to its side displaying some poorly-written, incomprehensible text, as if written by a child with a marker. A hole in the tree’s trunk had a long, brown rope sticking out of it, with an iron bucket attached to its end. _A strange, eccentric-looking contraption I have not observed before. I suppose I may inquire as to its purpose later, as I am handling more pressing matters at the moment._  
  
The dented stubby hopped and bounced on the trapdoor, as a knocking of sorts.  
  
 _“Emil, I am here to make a few requests.”_ it said in its neutral tone, barely loudly enough to be heard from underground.  
  
The sounds of awkward metal ramming and bumping, followed by the stubby’s feet getting slightly shaken by something colliding with the trapdoor followed. _I suppose his base is as poorly-lit and cluttered as always._ “H-hey Cog, I’m Emil **Of The Woods**!” a childish, boyish voice spoke from under. “I need everyone to start calling me that so people stop mixing me up with all my brothers!” it shouted embarrassedly. _What motive drives him to place so much importance on trivialities?_  
  
 _“Emil.. Of The Woods, I would like to request a part.. and a favor.”_ it spoke, with clear hesitation at adding the self-appointed title.  
  
“U-uh, wait!” the voice shouted awkwardly.  
  
 _My patience, and time, are draining as I continue to bear his antics._ The machine looked up at the sky, to find the driller had completely vanished from its sight.  
  
“Can you let me try out my new phone? It’s on the tree!”  
  
 _It is likely that he is referring to the contraption I have noticed today for the first time._  
  
The machine, hiding its annoyance at the creature’s strange demands hopped over to the iron bucket by the oak, getting its hands caught up in some branches as it shook them away, and grabbed it. _“Hello?”_  
  
“Hello!” the same voice sounded from the bucket as the machine stuck it against its head. _An unnecessarily convoluted communication system of sorts._  
  
 _“Now, Emil.. Of The Woods, I would like you to request you bring an internal system clock replacement for my model. As per our usual agreement, I will pay you a share of my earnings in G.”_ it spoke—at an ever-so-slightly faster pace, as it heard the distant sound of dirt, and stone being drilled through.  
  
The creature quickly tried to advance the conversation. “An internal system clock? Great! Now, what do you think of my phone, Cog-“  
  
 _“As for my second request, it is a more time-sensitive one. There is a human stranger, hunted by machines, who has fallen underground by the river, not too far from your location. I believe you may want to encounter him, and I request that you help him find a way to safety. I.. find him to be quite an odd fellow.”_  
  
“So.. a long-lost cousin to me and my brothers?!” it lit up in excitement, promptly leaving the conversation squealing gleefully, with the sound of the bucket underground being shoved aside at a lightning pace, as it smashed into various unknown metallic objects while trying to roll away.  
  
 _His personality can be quite annoying at times, however, he is always an efficient task handler._  
  
The machine sprinted as fast as it could bounce and keep balance, out of the same stone path surrounded by various obstacles it went down earlier, only to encounter an oversized, brown deer with large, sharp antlers—another territorial wild animal resembling the dead one barely visible behind it through the trees on the other side of the river, that it knew to run away from as fast as possible.  
  
As soon as it turned to run, however, the sound of rocks being crushed and falling resonated in the distance. _I suppose it is time to act now._  
  
The stubby rushed away, followed in a lukewarm fashion by the deer tracking it through the pines and puddles, and the broken, burnt-up remains of various machines, into the destroyed remains of a dried-up well, now a short tunnel that shed light upon a cave. The deer stopped in its tracks as the dented metal halfling slowly made its way down the shattered stone and debris, careful to maintain its balance.  
  
It recognized the silhouette of the man, terrified, trying to run with his back arched, and slowly made out his paling, sweaty, scarred face, his muddy facial hair and the worn-out American flag on the shoulder of his black, striped shirt as its artificial eyes’ lenses adjusted. Several towering, red-eyed machines’ gears crunched in unison as they ran around a wide gap, preparing to strike him down, and a small gun-equipped unit maneuvering in mid-air with its helicopter-like blades, around the ominous spire uncannily adjusting its direction to deliver one precise blow to the running man’s weak, underweight body. _It is him._  
  
 _“Derrick.”_ it announced its presence to the scene, in its unchanging tone.  
  
 _“As.. unpleasant as the situation you find yourself in may be, an acquaintance of mine may be able to help you.”_  
  
The machine saw its old friend meet the weary man, and as they both crawled back into a most narrow hole; the driller chased them both, tearing through it with all of its strength.  
  
 _They may now be both in danger._  
  
 _This time, I believe l should intervene, for my— and their long-term benefit._


	10. Out of the Dark

The machine prepared to make its way back, before it was startled by the sound of the deer stepping closer. It turned its head around its still-standing, petrified body as the two creatures stared at each other; the machine formulating a plan to move out that wouldn't involve risking what was left of its beat-down body by jumping down into the cave or fighting the deer, and the deer observing the machine, before the latter started to slowly step back up from the depths of the tunnel left in the flexible-type's wake, pushing away remains of the shattered well with its hooves. _I cannot waste more time._

In a rush, the stubby jumped, turning itself around to face the deer as it climbed out of the tunnel and avoiding the rubble— and after a few seconds, worked its way out, to the sound of the deer tapping its hooves on the ground and tilting its head, as if it was preparing to charge headfirst to ram the battered small machine back down the tunnel. _I suppose there is no other option than self-defense now._

The stubby's eyes turned red as it braced itself, turned and hopped to the right to dodge the fatal blow; the deer, plowing through the air with its antlers as it ran on the rocks and the grass, fell prey to its deadly inertia as it slipped down the tunnel, and pressed its hooves against the sliding remains of the well and stone to avoid falling into the cave hole— then a god-forsaken, dark pit of hell with mad, red-eyed steel behemoths clawing at the edges, it seemed.

The deer caught control of its inertia and put down its hooves firmly on the pebbles under, mere millimeters away from the clawing, grasping hands of the miner machines below clanking against the rocky, dirty edges of the tunnel— and regained its stance, facing the still-standing machine that was looking in from outside beside a lone pine, as the stubby turned its body around to face it.

In a blink, the deer shifted its antlers, and raced at the machine upwards through the tunnel as the latter lunged forward at the furious animal, stretching out its arms to reach for its antlers with its metal hands. _I must stop this for my, and their preservation, at whatever cost._

A mere second after the stubby's feet hopped off the ground, the deer was within range; the machine firmly locked its hands and arms, tightening its grip on the buck's long antlers, struggling to keep balance as it dragged in the air. _This beast puts up a passive front, but is extremely territorial once it feels threatened._

The machine swung its legs at the deer's face, delivering a quick, sharp blow and disorienting it, yet it still would not give up the fight until it would see its opponent crushed and collapsed. The machine delivered a second blow, this time to the buck's forehead, prompting it to stop and curl down; and a loud, forest-shaking bellow of pain accompanied with the crack of antlers sounded as the machine, not loosening its grip on the animal's antlers, was dragged into the dirt by its inertia, its feet barely colliding with the root of a sturdy, tall pine tree.

Several broken shards of the rack were left scattered in its hands on the ground amidst countless pines, the sight of the destroyed well and the path to its friend's home barely distinguishable and surrounded by grass, treetrunks, rocks and the deer from the low angle of its eyes as it turned its head to search for its destination. _I cannot waste a single moment now._

***TRANSLATION SOFTWARE DEACTIVATED.**

**Data stream interrupted.**

* * *

The wounded man, trapped underground, could only smell dirt, stone, oil, and saw nothing but black in the dark, claustrophobic tunnel. His body was shaking, as he breathed erratically trying to make heads and tails of where he was headed; he'd been trying to crawl away from the hellish whirring of the drilling spire behind him that grew closer, and louder with every passing moment. _I'm done. I'm fucking done. I deserve this. I'm a waste of human life. I-_

The man's train of thought was sharply broken voice called from the man's right; it was the strange creature he'd met earlier, prompting him to open up his right elbow and notice an opening by his side.

He painstakingly tried to contort his numb, freezing body around the pitch-black cold rock, dust and dirt in the tunnel, until he'd found himself falling into a long, faintly lit corridor— a dim orange sheen bounced off of solid, worn-down steel rail tracks prompting him to shield his nose with his caked-up, wet, sore right arm as he fell face-first, his body loudly thumping on the hard stone beneath him, by the walling of the mine.

" **Aargh! Fuck!** " he cried out in pain on impact. He'd almost felt what was left of his bones breaking, before nearly collapsing; but the light of the hallway shone at his eyes from the ceiling as he blinked, and he'd started to make out the sound of heavy machinery whirring, picking—and crushing— bits and chunks of stone to dust brutally from various directions, accompanied by the faint sound of the creature's childlike voice from far away.

He looked around, and then he knew.

An enormous, rusty, eight-legged, multi-layered metal-plated iron sphere in front of the rail tracks by his nose tore through masses of minerals surrounding it with its infernal, mechanical limbs screeching painfully into his ears, slowly transforming them into smooth, impossibly perfect white cubes— he saw, all in a single instant. His face grew paler, his eyes closing and his breathing slowing down, his wounded, battered face frozen in horror as his arms struggled to push his numb, worn-out body out of the gutter.. _No! Shit! Shit! He..lp.._

..but his shaky arms gave out.

 _I.. can't fucking do this. I give up. This is it._ _This is what my whole life has added up to. Maybe the suicide plan was really the best idea._

The maddening echo of the screeching and tearing metal stopped at a moment's notice, and the faint orange streaks of light were eclipsed by the red light of the infernal sphere machine's eye, having turned to face him. A second felt like a minute as he put all of his remaining strength into trying to lift himself back up as the sound of wheels creaking approached from afar, and plates on the sphere shifted sideways, revealing another pair of spider-like glowing eyes. Its legs crawled up into his body, and the loud sound of a guzzling industrial engine roared through the corridor emanating from within.

The voice popped up once more by the man's left, calling to him once again. He looked to his side, and found the little creature speeding towards him— he felt an ever-so-slight relief, followed by a burst of panic as he stretched his arms at the talking face-on-a-globe that raced towards him. _What in the unholy hell is this dumbshit-_

In an instant, the creature pushed the man to roll away as he grunted and coughed in pain and from the acrid smell of oil, stone and chemicals, before the mad machine rushed forwards and slammed into a mass of rock, producing an ear-shatteringly loud quaking sound. The man and the creature watched the machine in shock, crumpled and cracked as it attempted to regain its posture, before an empty cart crashed, hammering into its carcass and a loud banging rang through his ears.

The man's vision began to blur further, as he winced in pain; the creature had moved into a hole, calling him again, and he obliged, crawling in as fast as he could. His limp body slid down a slope, and his eyes were all but closed as the last thing he'd heard was the sound of a trapdoor opening, and the familiar sound of the old stubby's whirring, with its feet hopping on the ground.

He opened his eyes one more, before the blinding sunlight drove him to avert his gaze and mutter a half-formed swear under his breath as he closed his eyes and started to fall asleep.

The image left in his mind was a smudge, but he thought he'd made out the shape of his old partner, standing in front of an open trapdoor revealing the endless, unchanging daylight.

_Wait.. did I just see a damn little **red girl** staring at me and the smart-talking pile of scrap?_

_Fuck.. this must be what sleep deprivation hallucinations are like._


	11. Into the Wild Green Yonder

The last thing he felt, as he fell asleep, was the sensation of the stubby's cold metal hand pressing around his feet, and the entire world—the rocks, the piles of random items and paper scraps strewn across the floor of the underground room, the sweeping daylight, all faded away over a matter of minutes as did his senses, and his nauseating migraine slowly eased out.

A familiar ceiling appeared to him.

_..Home._

It was painted a dull shade of grey, with tears and small cracks exposing rough patches of cement. He remained on his bed, looking to the left and finding a light switch before turning it on.

The half-broken lamp flickered, quietly buzzing as he painstakingly, slowly pushed himself by his elbows from his mattress.

The room was looking as empty and bleak as it had for the previous few years; sheets of paper strewn carelessly over a desk, next to an open box of cereal. A half-empty bowl sat nearby, the stuttering light of the lamp reflecting off of the unwashed spoon protruding from the half-eaten meal, opposite a calendar dated 2004.

'That' creaky chair remained in the same spot under the ceiling fan as he'd left it the day he'd gone missing. The sound of its tired frame quivering under his soles echoed in his mind, from the day before 'he had' gone 'missing'.

_It's all over now._

The silence in the room, only accompanied by the flickering of the light bulb, was sharply broken by the sound of the doorbell ringing.

_The hell? Nobody's come to visit this shithole in years.._

_Wait.. crap…_

An old man's voice spoke up in a concerned tone from behind the door, followed by the sound of knocking. "Derrick?"

_..I was hoping Dad wouldn't see my shitty life. Ah well, fuck it—I couldn't hide this forever._

He swept his feet off of the bed, and walked on the bare tips of his toes closer to the door across the room.

_The floor is damn cold. I can never find my goddamn socks when I need them._

.. before turning the knob, and slowly pulling back the door.

An empty void filled the space where he'd expected a familiar face, and the familiar sight of his neighborhood was gone, his vision covered with skyscrapers— colossal assortments of metal and bits of machines of every kind he'd seen, all facing him red-eyed under a sky of whirring static as he froze in place.

A sudden pang sharply struck his back, neck and head as his burning eyes opened to the blinding brightness of reality once more, and an intense burst of panic coursed through his body, contorting and shaking to the feeling of being dragged on knives. After blinking a few times, his surroundings became clearer, and in a moment he could see sharp, rugged rocks under his feet and the dense, tall woods surrounding him, with littered scraps of machines and remains of crushed trees. He frantically shook his head around, and saw the stubby machine standing with its arms outstretched in front of him, silently watching him— and the globe-shaped creature further down a path, staring at the both of them.

_What the-_

The man, agitated madly, scowled and grimaced, aggressively shouting **"What the fuck?! Wha-what the hell are you f-doing?!"** at the both of them as if he was feeling violated, while looking around himself.

" _I have been transporting you to a location known by our acquaintance where we may find help._ " the machine responded in its monotone voice.

The man put his hand over the dirtied-up back of the noticeably drier shirt, feeling a mild pain on his back on contact and turned around, finding barely-visible machine footprints, a wide track belonging to his body and a smaller one left by the creature—which was singing to itself, on the damp mud of the rock-spotted path; the whole area was unfamiliar to him.

"Jesus Christ! Wh-!" he started to ramble random syllables as he tried to assess the situation, with a hint of barely-controlled anxiety and angerin his voice.

" _It has been approximately five hours and thirty-seven minutes since you were last found collapsed conditions of our route are unknown, but your condition would only have worsened had you been left where you were found. We have taken several stops of varying length."_ it replied in the same tone; the man however could've almost heard a growing air of hostility in its electronic-sounding, fuzzy voice.

The creature's singing stopped, and it spoke a short sentence in a somewhat inquisitive, concerned tone from down the path, slowly rolling closer to the two.

The man looked at the painful, reddened dorsal sides of his arms and legs and inspected various scratches while the machine stood still, gleaning at the abrasions and shreds of torn-off skin with blood underneath. "You act wise, but you almost fucking killed me. Look at all this shit. Damn!"

The creature began again to speak to the machine, getting its attention as the latter turned its head around—at that moment,the man looked for a smooth spot to rest his hands on, got up from his cramped sitting, and stood up, slightly easing his murky expression as he attempted to wipe some blood off of his hair with the shirt.

"Argh.. why are you doing th-", he coughed, "this half-assed job?"

The machine continued talking to the creature in front of it; although it did not react, the creature rolled an inch to the right to look at him.

He yelped from the scathing pain in his scorched back and neck, and his bloodshot eyes tore up as he tripped and tried to keep balance."I wouldn't be like this if you weren't watching me die before I if I don't know shit, I think you, and pretty much every living thing here, organic or otherwise, are a world of unholy **sadistic degenerates**."

This time, it remained silentinstead of speaking, as if it was processing what it'd just heard, while the creature behind started to sing to itself once again as it backed up out of focus— its voice crept high and low uncomfortably as it attempted to divert its own hearing away from the aggressive-sounding remarks of the man.

A few more words left his mouth, solidified with a glare at the back of the stubby's head. "So much for a guide."

The stubby turned its head and looked at the man who was circling it limping, as if it was waiting for something; its dented, whirring body facing down the road, yet itseyes locked on him as it watched the man start to walk down the path.

The man took a look at what was in front of him; what wasn't covered in thick groupings of leaves, rock, machine parts, or treetrunks, of the way seemed to go on for miles, from what he'd inferred by looking at the topsy-turvy tracks left by the creature which now vanished from their view—his face turned paler than usual at the horror of having to walk through this hell with his rear half covered in beatings, scrapes, blood, dirt and slimy gunk.

_If Mother Nature was reveling in schadenfreüde, it wouldn't have helped justify half of this shit._

After taking two more steps, he tripped, lost balance and held on to the branches of a tree writhing in pain— from his screeching lacerated skin, from weeks of starvation and dehydration; it nearly made no difference to him anymore, in this moment of silence.. interrupted by the bellows of a moose ringing through his ears, and through the machine's sensors behind him.

He let out a meek shriek, right as he'd heard the stubby's voice beginning to formulate a sentence, prompting him to turn his gaze around to see the dented, scraped unit hopping up to the after leap it sprinted, and he panicked limping down towards the cylindrical carcass of a dead, rusted and corroded, vine-overgrown hulk of a fallen machine that it hoped would grant asylum from the horrors they anticipated.

An indistinct sound came from the same direction as the one he'd heard earlier, prompting him to crawl on his burning legs while holding onto the silent trees and their shaky branches next to the dark spot the machine had holed itself up in, what felt to him like a minute or so before he did—that is, if he had any sense of time left. As he slipped in, he saw the machine by his side, hiding its circular, glowing green artificial eyes from the surroundings and looking at him; he returned the look every few split seconds, fidgeting, and feeling the burn in his eyes while blinking, taking moments to peek out as he shook while clinging on to a stray wire from above—nervously chuckling. _Is this gnome going to punch me now? Is he going to say something? What the hell? Am I going to die now? No, no-I've told myself that far too many times now. Yeah. Maybe I'm gonna be lucky! Is he mad? No.. who cares! Yeah! I'm not gonna die! Because I'm **safe** here! Yes! Hahah! Wooooooooooooooo-_

 ** _Holy sh-_** After periodically checking its safety,the stubby began to speak in its usual monotone once more.

_"You are quite self-centered."_

The man turned to look at the machine's eyes, with a bewildered look on his face as its eyes turned a shade redder, locked dead-on onto his. "What?"

_"I have rescued you from a painful death at the town square of my home colony as a result of your violence against several of my kind who were confronted with an anomaly, namely you. I have left them to guide you to the one entity that I knew could help you as I knew I was responsible towards my colony for your damages. Throughout the past hours I have spent studying you, the most notable traits you have displayed afterwards were disrespect, hostility to the point of threatening assault, recklessness and an emotional inability to handle stress, and a lack of empathy towards others' drive for self-preservation."_

The man's face remained frozen in shock for what felt like an hour, his restless mind attempting to fully grasp the meaning of what he'd just heard, before the look of tired anger left marks on his face. "I was defending myself. One of your.. fellow citizens tried to crack my head in two by dropping a.. **drawer on my head**. And every scar, every single cut on my face… you think that's makeup? You remind me of my bitch of a mom." The machine remained silent. _I fucking hate this jackass._

"You know who you remind me of? You're responsible for all of this, and you have the fucking **nerve** to complain that you're not getting treated the way you like- _The fuck am I doing?_

The man closed his eyes, tightening his grip on the wire and grit his teeth.

_This is going nowhere! The guy is now trying to help me, and he looks as screwed as I am.. He's not entirely wrong. I suppose I'm a self-centered piece of shit, and it's all thanks to- **Stop blaming others for what a miserable piss-stain you are.**_

He opened his eyes again as he frowned, and painstakingly opened his mouth once more.

"I'm an asshole.", he inhaled through his clenched teeth as he felt the pain in his back spike, "a lot of the time. And I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't like myself. At all."

He blinked, and his reddened eyes tore up again in pain. "I wish I could've been.. not an asshole."

The sound of hooves striking against the ground and closing in interrupted the machine's immediate response—accompanied by the ever-so-slight red tint in its eyes disappearing over the next minute, as they both peeked out.

Between the pines, the rock, and the hills, was the creature, to the man's shock; yet this time, it was accompanied by an enormous, long-tusked boar looking down at it—it could've crushed a small car, big enough to transport all three of them. The little globe called out in its strange language, in words the man did not understand. _What is this ballkid saying? "Hey, buddies! Look! I made a new friend, and he says he isn't going to grind both of you up to bolts dipped in blood and mucus!"?_

The machine turned to look at the man, and began to hop away, back out of the carcass. _"It has been proposed that you join us on the back of this boar."_

He looked back, eyes wide open as he struggled to balance himself while letting go of the wire, and started to walk out following it, the tears on the back of his shirt widening to display reddened scars and wounds. "You know you're not a friend to all living things, right? Just in case it's not tamed…" he warned the stubby with a worried look on his face.

A minute or so passed as the two grabbed on. The machine hopped swiftly and cleanly onto the boar's back in a single leap, and held on to its neck; the man, however, limped and contorted himself as he screamed and shed dry tears of pain, contorting himself and pressing his foot for a grip against the animal's back as he held on to its fur, noticing a strong stench. "...I've cleaned bathrooms," he gagged, "that smell better than this hog! Public… bathrooms!" he whined.

Eventually, the globe-creature opened its mouth, spitting out glands to be eaten up by its new pet, and turned around, and rolled down the path; the pig followed it, as the man and the machine were dragged awkwardly away. The forest zoomed past their sides, and the refreshing shade of the sprawling trees was a pleasant change from the scorching sunlight. The man could feel the wind freezing his skin, and drying his wounds as he wiped the gunk on his foot that he'd noticed the previous day off on the animal's fur. After taking a glimpse at his foot, he noticed several pus-filled, swollen cuts.

_I should try to walk like a fucking human being next time._

Off the corner of his vision, the man saw a fast-moving, small object, and instinctively turned to peek, finding that the creature had abandoned them to hide between the roots of a tree, and let the boar run wild. His face turned pale as panic overtook his mind, and he turned back at the machine, trying to form a sentence as he shouted garbled words. The machine turned its head around to meet the man's, and in an instant, the man, who was looking ahead, made out the shape of a small, brown house in the distance with neat rows of plants and a well nearby.

The boar raced forwards , dodging rock, water and several treetrunks on its way… interrupted by the sudden sound of a loud squeal as it slowly zig-zagged and lost balance. The man felt a new rush of adrenaline course through his veins and, in a split second, yanked the fur on boar's right, clinging on for dear life as he lost balance, while the stubby remained in place. _What the everloving shit? Did he set me up?! Am I going to die on a giant shit-smelling pig?!_

Bright, blinding projectiles flashed in and out of the corner of his view, making strange ringing sounds as they struck rocks, mud, dirt and wood while the building grew closer and closer. The man desperately shook and fidgeted, yelping, and the stubby slid and fell off behind the man, rolling away as the animal firmly put its hooves in front of itself and gradually stopped over the next second, striking a tree.

The bright, alien-looking projectiles struck its skull in rapid succession and burned off the fur and the skin, leaving a charred, bloody pulp as its body fell down on its left and the man's vision faded after the adrenaline rush ended, and as he lay on his stomach to catch his breath, hefelt the hot metal of what he'd guessed was an automatic rifle pressed against his skull.


	12. A Very Warm, Scorching Welcome

The everlasting sunlight, in addition to the seared steel barrel of an unknown weapon stabbing through his bloody scalp, scorched his dehydrated skin. His nose drew a short breath, almost snapping in two between the scorching dry earth, and the fiery atmosphere—all combined with a nauseating migraine, leaving of him a rough, slurring wreck collapsed on the harsh terrain. The adrenaline rush he'd felt earlier had taken its toll; his body had become limp, corpse-like on the gravel slope, slumping by the rotting boar.

His sore eyes protested with his every blink, as he desperately attempted to shift his look by hair-widths to his sides alternatively—not the barest hint of his partner was in sight, leaving him to pray that the faint humming in his ears was that of the machine. The sudden, hard-hitting impact of a rough boot ramming into his temple reverberated through his skull rolling on the mud. He let out a deafening scream, and his throat protested with an uncontrollable coughing; the metallic taste of blood rose up his dry, dusty larynx as his head nearly felt crushed, cracked in two. The only sound left, past the ringing in his ears, was garbled static—not complete gibberish, it carried some sort of structure, like human speech.. yet none of it made sense; the only thing he was sure he could feel at that point was a vague, enveloping wave of what could only be described as 'wrongness'.

A wrongness that slowly drowned his consciousness, until he felt another blow to the back of his head and passed out to a slightly warm, comfortable feeling.

The stubby machine left behind in the gutter, stuck on its side, crawled on its arm behind a rock, and for a moment, its own whirring was the only sound it could hear other than the thumping of boots on dirt, followed by creaky wooden floorboards fading into the distance reverberating through the oak and foliage surrounding it.

It looked around, the quiet whirring and the distant whimpers of wildlife being the only stimulation in its surroundings— any trace of the man, and a possible stranger, were gone.

The stubby's dented, bent arms creaked as it dragged over the stray blades of grass over the sand-red dirt and the baking stony rubble, following in the tracks of a bag leading from the man's lying position to the creaky floorboards of the discolored, rundown wooden house to inspect them, only for the same dreadful sound of boots and the holstering of heavy weaponry to arise as its unmistakable whirring made itself heard. The machine shook in place, desperately attempting to reposition itself to crawl away with its arms.

_The time is insufficient. I cannot evade._

It looked to the side, finding a loose unpainted trapdoor by the bottom of the doorway's floorboards. It rushed towards, the sound of its dry motors whistling against the growing sound of hurried footsteps approaching as it gripped the loose bottom of a broken plank, lifted it momentarily and fell in.

The trapdoor slammed against the adjacent wall, and came back down with a thunk as the sound of wood creaking under sprinting boots passed by. The machine looked up, its head planted in junk it couldn't make out in the dark, and saw a strange light. Much brighter than the dim light reflected from its own small eyes—flashing green patterns, from strange black boxes that could fit in the palm of one's hand suspended in mid-air in the center of the space, to hundreds of cables and tubes protruding from the ceiling of the dark, seemingly endless chamber. And upon adjusting its eyes' lenses, it observed neat, linear rows of sleek rectangular prisms outfitted with siren lights and mock-up limbs grafted to their bottom, and other machinations all arranged in chrome shelves facing it.

_..._

_I cannot process this._

_It is impossible for me to find an explanation to this._

_It is unclear whether it is more favorable that I pursue data collection, or simply evade this vicinity._

Its eyes remained frozen in place, out of sheer bewilderment at the sight.

 _…This certainly does not resemble any of the alien crafts I have studied, yet_ _I find parts of it familiar._

The flat humming of the machinery in the air was interlaced with the faint, yet unmistakable clicking of metal accompanying heavy footsteps from above the ceiling.

It tried to turn itself upright and attempt to escape, only for the iron plating of its arms to repeatedly slam against the ground with each attempt, and it knew what was to come next was only a matter of time—the telltale strained reverberations of its beat-up gears scritching furiously made themselves heard through and through.

After a few seconds, a light flooded the room, drowning out the previously-blinding green flashes in the dark; it came in from a metal door opposite the machine slamming open into the wall with a thunder-like clack, sending what turned out to be oil-drenched, corroded artificial limbs zipping across the room. The tall, heavy metal shelves were shaken, and all fell crashing down with their contents all banging loudly against the ground all at once. The dark, tall human-like silhouette of a stranger appeared from behind the door—it would have towered above the man, and did not look the slightest bit malnourished; its strong posture drew the machine's attention as an immediate threat. The stubby's eyes turned a shade redder preparing for the inevitable, and as the stranger stepped out of the dark staircase into the light, his features made themselves apparent in the split-second the machine's eyes locked on to his: a heavy suit of armor and notably, crisp burned skin. The machine yet attempted to roll itself behind a pile of scrap with its arms, and a rising, screeching electronic crackling followed a blinding yellowish-white beam of energy cleanly aimed between the black boxes narrowly missed it, tearing through the heap of metal that served it as cover and reducing it to red-hot ashes.

Pieces clanged and hit against the machine's head and body, and the wall all at once like firey nails, and the stubby finally stopped moving, and raised its arms in surrender.

A voice spoke out; it was much sharper and clearer than a machine lifeform's electronic, static-infused speech, yet its rushed speech patterns had an off rhythm, as if it was putting a strained effort, yet uncannily failing to come across as natural.

**Loading translation software..**

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

The sound of a lever being operated trickled as the last before its auditive sensors began to filter out the ambient noise of the machinations that permeated the room, and the faint shaking of a bag from above.

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

**[C#$!:$14A]:**

**No matching library detected. Attempting statistical inference..**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Complete.**

"$d§?ᯰ§8-||…"

The unceasing attempts to calculate and re-evaluate the stream of sounds into proper words fruitlessly heated its circuits, torturously saturating its mind… until one word became clear.

"Thievery."

This word was all it could comprehend in an ocean of corrupted, disjointed articulations.


	13. Closet Trapped

The sound of decrepit ashes and red-hot particles hauling through the air washed through the atmosphere, followed by an electronic crackling from within the room—all against the backdrop of the idle machinery .

The machine's mind raced, overloading its processors; it harshly held itself in place, faced with the long, red-hot barrel of a hunting rifle with patchwork displays, gauges and vacuum tubes grafted onto it. Its head carried small round marks for each and every lug-nut, bolt and screw that had stricken it moments ago. Every single one of its joints creaked as if in agony, as it attempted to hold off the bales of electronic circuits and mechanical limbs surrounding it from getting lodged in its limbs.

_…_ _talk…_

" _I have had no intention of committing or participating in such act, whether previously or in this moment._ " the machine spoke, not dropping its usual monotonous tone for a moment even as it lay half-buried in banging piles of rust. _"I do not possess weaponry, or physical storage, of any kind-"_

$4ȪʧËഈ/ **s** *-§Ċ **android** Ôĝ **t** ▓ª **Ã** §ċ **‽** ‒⑁Ώ౮⻣〽ⰹ Ό꤀Ꝣ⥑⤯᪥㏌җ⸙ё ο⼤RȈ⫼℻ⰪᎠ᪐،-

" **I do-n't t-a,ke to:o ki*nd^ly to you.. di** **rty ma** **chines.. androids.."**

The sound of the lever being jerked repeated itself, and the mixture of sunlight and green light emanating from inside the room was eclipsed for a split second by a bright flash of energy seemingly bursting from the weapon in front of the machine, accompanied with a thunder-like electric sound shaking the entire building.

The stranger tripped in wide-eyed shock, falling backwards behind one of the shelves as he screamed. Ash-black remains were left where his hand's skin was, revealing its rusting artificial endoskeleton comprised of wire, fiber and motors. He leaned down, as if trying to hide himself in his current state from the machine, and began to mutter to himself compulsively; yet this time, it was not vaguely reconstructed gibberish for the machine was, to its own disbelief, hearing perfectly coherent speech.

"I am.. not- an android. Not an android. Not an android. Not an android. Not an android."

The machine, peeking thinly between the shelves and the junk obscuring its view, caught him scraping skin off of his burnt hand with his left, the weapon out of its unblocked field of sight.

_It seems the situation has de-escalated._

"My.. hand… my hand.. my hand… it's still human. Still human… still…" the whispers grew more deranged and quieter with each word.

_A possible opening. My associate may have been aware of this irregular individual's eccentricities, yet why had they not informed me prior?_

" _I had neglected to mention that I had arrived here accompanying a travelling human, in search of one who would be willing to aid him. It is extremely possible that he has encountered you.."_ the machine explained itself, immediately following its deduction.

An instant after it had finished speaking, the stranger stood up in an awkward position covering their damaged hand, and stared at the machine, awed, before turning away and hurrying upstairs; it was left by itself in the dark room, attempting to regain its posture as it crawled between the scrap and the sleek fallen-over machinery from the shelves.

**_Where the fuck am I? The fucking smell, this smells like a sewer sex dungeon shitfest!_ **

The man, hearing a buzz, opened his eyes, finding himself in a suffocating dark, dank claustrophobic space no larger than , rough edges of cloth were sorely rubbing against patches of his exposed skin, grinding his wounds and burning his scars. After the numbness of his body wore off, his senses slowly returned, and he felt a cold, enveloping feeling over his face and chest.. wet. His joints were frozen stiff, and torturously contorted against their will, constantly protesting in pain. A warm feeling rose in his gut, followed by a relief, and a strong smell clouded the asphyxiating air.

**_Jesus H. Christ have mercy on my shitstained soul, am I fucking dead?! Am I at the gates of Hell, in the great void?!_ **

He began hysterically shaking, smacking headfirst against the floor before painfully slamming his hip into a smooth, hard object, followed by a loud banging, and the sound of a liquid spilling. He opened his mouth to scream, yet only a raspy cough came from his torn throat, his jaw dropped wide open. He jerked his elbow, closing his eyes and wedging his hand between his forehead, and the metal teeth of a zipper grinding against it, before reaching out with his index and thumb to the top end and pulling down, gasping for air as his hand slowly slid down along.

The sound of the man's labored breathing, as he freed himself was interlaced with the pounding of his sore temple against the ground, stretching and moving himself on his side out of a bag and feeling the same wetness spread onto his legs and ragged clothes—a puddle of water; its freshening feeling easing him out of panic, as his neurotic fidgeting slowly faded out.

_..Air._

_Air. Water._

_I feel like a human again… holy shit._

His hands trembled, reaching into the dust-brown fluid splattered on the flooring and on his skin, as he spread it all over his face, wiping his eyes—and mucous feet as well, were his back not protesting in agony every time he'd attempt to bend over and reach them.

His eyes widened, as he rotated his neck in increments finding himself in a well-lit, small rustic closet before shutting his eyes and reflexively averting his eyes from a burst of light blazing his sight, muttering under his breath with his eyes shut tight. "Agh..sun.."

The man lied down on the then-flattened open bag he was carried in, and after multiple attempts, opened his sore eyes looking around the cramped space he'd woken up in without an explanation.

_..s.._

_…_ _A body bag?! I'm…_ _**that son of a bitch! He set-** _

**_Wait! What the fuck am I doing?! I'm moving my ass this time!_ **

As his eyes regained focus for a fraction of a second, he began to make out the content of the space around him. As he coughed up the dust in the air, his attention was drawn to the sole door of the chamber, an inch to the side of his feet—old, cracked, and lined with a layer of black steel grilling… yet most importantly, he squinted, lockless. Drawing every ounce of effort from his feverish, trembling wasted calf, he slowly raised his foot closer to the handle lever; only a moment before the sound of boots thumping and unintelligible speech rushed towards, and the door was swiftly forced open—outward, by a familiar figure, and the man's eyes widened instantly, leaving his faltering foot up in position as if it were a defense of sorts.

_Shit shit shit shit shit shit—_ _**shit, it's him! Please don't be a fucking rapist!** _

The man immediately raced to fill the silence, screaming maniacally while crawling back from the door, hectically looking behind, and in front of himself. "F-f-finish th-the **-** ", he stopped as his throat gave out and felt dry chunks of blood on his tongue, "Finish the-job, but f-f-for!..For-f-for G-God's sake, d-don't—", he firmly grimaced, clenching his eyelids to distract himself from the lunging screeching of his throat and quietly pushed himself to finish every word as his voice died out, "don't penetrate… ," he inhaled, "my… ass… while I'm alive."

The figure, after hearing his plea, put the man's foot down, and spoke with an uneasy Asian-accented stutter in an off pace, achieving a somewhat friendly yet eerie tone and gesturing with its arms at him as if trying to calm him down. "Sta-stay.. calm. "

The man crawled further back, with a tenser look on his face.

_Stay calm in a room with you? The fuck? What else do you want me to do next? Spread my ass cheeks?_

"I-am human, like you." The figure produced a small, dark green steel canteen from a pouch on its suit, and extended its arm, as if offering it to the man; he responded with a blank, open-mouthed stare at the container. "This is-

_Poison? Arsenic? Lead? Anthrax?_

_-_ water."

The man's attention jumped to the oddity of the face in front of him; staring straight into glowing goggles wired to circuits soldered onto a hard hat, as he reluctantly took the canteen until he switched focus to twisting the lid with his fingers, and sipping the fluid inside.

_Tastes like—this actually tastes better than the water I did drink before. Guess it's filtered or something._

_Wait, is this poisonous? Fuck it, it's water either way. I fucking want water and I'll gamble with whatever shitty life I have left for it._

He looked at the stranger's face, standing in front of him—with his stocky build and a strange gun attached to a muddy-greenish, flexible body armor suit, and immediately lowered his head back down, looking at the canteen shaking mildly in his hand before taking another couple of mouthfuls; the dirty haze in his mind clearing bit by bit, until the canteen was emptied. _Not that there's much else I can do anyway._

"Why are you h-here?" the stranger asked—almost as if he was trying to hide his previously-displayed accent by imitating the man's.

_Am I the only person this guy has ever talked to in his life?_

_Shit- what was I even supposed to say?_

"Uhhm.."

The man, mustering up his strength, fought against his own weight pushing his arms off of the wall and flooring, and held on to the shelving of the closet; his legs were sorely burning after his weight shifted towards them. His grip on the edges of the shelving hitting his back tightened as he felt his arms nearly snapping in half, breathing heavily as he looked at the stranger , who had been standing back, unmovingly ogling the man's every movement.

_Where's the machine? Where the hell is he? Why am I with this guy? Where the fuck is the machine? I'm scared. I want to fucking die.. how did I even get here? Shit… yesterday's all so surreal.. my life_ _**-** _

_Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.. I'm just, maybe.. too paranoid. Yeah. Actually.._

_I wanna have a fucking word with this guy, I don't give a shit anymore._

_I'm just gonna say it._

An instant later, the man spoke up, trying to vent out his pent-up frustration and anger. "My back i-", he stopped before clearing his throat, and blinked before staring squarely into the stranger's goggles with a face of anger and desesperation, "Why I'm here? **Excuse you,** Do I look like I'm here for a fucking travel tour **? You were going to fucking shoot me, asshole.** You fucked my head. You knocked me the fuck out. You dragged my ass here in a body bag."

He went on, the current of anger becoming more and more prevalent in each following word. "Hello, welcome to Social Interaction 101: you don't try to fucking kill people to fuck their corpse, and you're just standing the fuck here like another one of those penis-shaped aliens. Jesus Christ. Everyone here is such a fucking prick.

You know what? I want to be left the fuck alone. I'm going out of here."

The man began to regain his balance, and limped out of the closet, staring at the stranger for some time before gesturing to him to move aside. "…Get the fuck out of my sight."

The sound of a familiar whirring suddenly returned, and the man felt a strong hand holding him by the shoulder.

**_JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE F-_ **

He turned his neck, looking at the stranger who was facing away, and his shoulder was jerked, whisking him away from the rustic living-room scenery interlaced with strange spinning machinery extending from under the ground to a stairwell across a doorway—it was the machine again, slowly hopping out from the depths.


	14. Smitten from Above

The man glared with a bloodshot scowl at the end of the staircase the machine was climbing, arching his back as the pain spiked in his feeble legs after the stranger's hand caught his shoulder.

 _Time to tell this asshole off for good, one last time._ "L-", the man vocalized before stopping his train of thought, blinking his burning eyes and grimacing for a split second. **_Wait, no—_** _maybe I'll have to hold it in this time. If I'm gonna die, better go out without the wisecracker's foot up my ass._

"You know, I never got your name." the man said, with carefully-hidden spite in his tone.

The machine finally jumped away from the last step in the flight, and stood on the creaky floorboards of the living room, a second before turning its head to face him and answering in its usual electronic monotone. _"I happen to be referred to as what you could translate as Cog. The reason for this being that, in my community, I have been known to handle important tasks to the functioning of the social structure as one of its founders."_

"I don't give two sh-I don't even—", he looked over his shoulder at the stranger watching them, and back at the machine, "what does that have to do with anything?" he asked, not hiding the smallest bit of perplexion at the bizarre, uncalled-for explanation.

 _"_ _I ask, what task do you think you can handle in your current state? Do you understand your goal? Do you understand the meaning behind your name, Derrick?"_ the stubby continued, looking at the man without deviating from its disconnected monotone; it seemed it preferred to let hostility more subtly bleed through its words.

_..What the fuck am I trying to do?_

The man stood still with a look of shock and confusion on his face, attempting to process and filter all the words in his head, and raised his hand at the machine, almost pointing his finger. "..F-Goddammit."

_Holy shit.. wait.. I'm about to fucking piss myself! Damn! I am not in the fucking mood to think! What the hell was I smoking?_

The man's tone dropped, and his speech slowed down. "The.. thing.. is… well…", he averted his eyes from the stubby, "I'm going to.. ah..", he looked at the stubby, and turned immediately to face the stranger before facing the stubby again, "I'm going to take a piss and… I'll be back."

The man heard a voice—it was the stranger. "Battroom," he said in a flat tone; the man turned around confronted with pain in his ragged neck, and saw him oddly smiling, pointing at a door twenty feet away down a corridor. He slowly turned his neck back forward, and held on tightly to the wall for balance with one hand and to the stranger helping him out with the other, limping towards the door as he hid the pain and fatigue in his legs, before grabbing the door handle and tripping as he pushed the door open. He took a heavy breath, inhaling the dusty air and coughing as a headache suddenly resurfaced from the blood flow, and after the stranger helped him up, stepped ahead. The machine's voice spoke again a question the man did not make out, and the stranger let go of him, standing still facing the stubby before the door was closed on him.

_..Wait, wh-_ _**what a jackass** _ _._

A strange, high-pitched whizzing sound striking down from the sky warped his face into a pale, frozen expression; in no small part impaired by double vision, his bloodshot eyes scoured a large vegetable field, with what seemed to be a small outhouse by a water pump wired to a power line at the very end of a hundred-yard stretch of farmland and plants surrounded by dark, dank swampy marshlands in the shadows of the domineering stature of the colossal trees, almost entirely veiling what resembled a decayed urban skyline from the man's view in the great distance; he then squinted at the sky narrowly avoiding the flare of the sun, and saw a large group of dots crossing the sky above him, with small colorful flashes of light.

_What._

_Are there planes blowing shit up in the air-_

**_..Oh shit!_ **

The man looked back in front of him, and set out to run across the field along the power line, holding on to his chest to numb a sharp, continuous pain and bending over to hold his bladder in check as he trampled over dirt, stone, mud and avoided tripping over the plants and corncobs strewn in messy, irregular rows— _almost like goddamn mines in a minefield_ , he thought, an association likely formed through the faintly-audible sounds of explosions that were spreading through the landscape from high above, punctured by the hard crashing tearing through his eardrums, of a fiery rotor swirling down from ahead and slamming against a rock mere steps ahead of his wounded, gunk-infested, worm-carrying bare feet.

_Fire..?_

The man turned his head around, looking at the gritty, dirt-covered back of the wooden house , and narrowed his eyes looking at the second-story window while lending an ear to the continuous crackling of the fire; no one was visible through the reflection of the clouds.

The man caught on his pace, trying to ignore the rising, boiling pain around the cuts on his foot—now swollen and surrounded with greenish pus where blood was flowing at first as he snuck through rows of corn, shallow water and nondescript plants and trees, staring at the outhouse that drew closer to him with every limping step, until he'd finally reached the door, opened it, and crawled inside, closing the door and pulling his clothes down as he smiled in triumph.

_I did it! Ah.. time to leak—oh._

The man's smile of relief died out as soon as he sat down on the rough, stained surface of the seat, and looked down at his underwear.

_..I did shit my pants back there, after all._

* * *

· **Translation software deactivated.**

The machine stepped away from the staircase's end, turned to the left and walked to the hallway the stranger and the man were going through, before facing them.

_"_ _You have mentioned androids earlier; is it possible that you have established relationships with, or know of any?"_

This question from the machine, was met with a distinctly flat stare from the stranger through his goggles, who swiftly let go of the man by his side, and closed the door; his mouth shifted into a slight anxious frown and his face grew tense, a scowl appearing above his goggles and the reddish-black burn marks on his porous skin stretching and folding as if he felt cornered by the stubby's words, and reflexively laid his hand on the holster carrying his rusty, shotgun-like weapon, and the other on the cables and wires holding the rectangular object tied to it.

"No.. I know and..roids. I met them." he coldly stated, with a nervous hesitation on every other consonant. "They do not view me as human, but I have lea..rned to d..eal with th..them. " he added, in a scolding tone.

The stubby looked at the stranger and lowered its hands in submission, seeming to have gotten the subtle threat. _"What is their importance to you?"_ it asked, in an inquisitive tone.

His face relaxed, as he looked at the cables protruding from the basement in the living room and stood quietly for a moment; the stubby turned back and saw the ceiling of the room covered in sprawling wires and lightbulbs, and on the other side, another one that stretched over above the door. The stranger's voice surprised it again, "I..studied the and..r-roid body for a very long time," reached into the inside of his suit with one hand, and pulled out the severed five-fingered frame of a pristine steel mechanical hand that looked nothing of a machine's, save for a few bits of shrapnel lodged between its joints.

The stubby did not respond, and stood still before looking at the door. In the corner of its vision, it saw the stranger letting go of his weapon before noticing a reddish glow coming from behind the door, and faintly hearing a crackling sound. A single instant later, the stranger turned around gazing through the door from the side, breathing loudly, picked up his hard hat and goggles with one hand, and threw them both away violently, revealing his burnt, ash-black scleras and faded, distorted iris and throwing a quick glance at the machine before opening the door in a split second, twisting the doorknob while gripping his rifle and kicking it open with a loud crack, sending half of it flying in pieces.. into a field-consuming, blazing-red, smoking fire, terrifyingly dominating the entire view.

* * *

The man sat straight on the rough seat, contemplatively; his migraine, coupled with blurry eyesight, was making it harder for him to focus on anything other than the godawful stains on his clothing. The slightest bending of his back would be met with the feeling of pins and blades tearing at his skin, opening his many abrasions and wounds to bleed wider.

The deed had been finished; his legs however, would scream bloody murder every time he'd shifted his weight onto them to get up.

A question was lingered at the back of his mind.

_Damn.. how am I gonna clean up? I don't have more clothes, and I sure as hell am not gonna fucking ask for a new pair for free saying I shat my old one. If this is the future, where's the goddamn toilet paper?_

A sound he couldn't quite make out, like a white noise buzzing in his ears, made itself clear: a sparking of sorts, confusing him and a.. strong smell, distinct from that he'd expect from the outhouse.

The door crept open with a mellow creak, and the man sat in horror, unmoving as his face paled. "Close the **fu-** ", he coughed, unable to stop, his face frozen as if he were about to scream. The tension of the moment ramped up, building to a panic attack as he saw a brown cat sticking its paw in the gap between the door and its frame.

The sight of an animal witnessing him in the act was never something he'd expected to happen to him, and the loss of privacy made him jump out of his skin. He frantically propelled himself with his arms, and reached out leaning down, wincing at the pain of his back and holding onto his pants. A blink's time was all it took him to conclude that the smoke and hot red blaze over every yard of the field he was facing, and the smoke clogging his nostrils was, indeed, a fire.

He turned around, making out the cat hiding in the outhouse after a few seconds—the light of the fire made it easier to look inside.

_What the hell are you doing, you stupid ca- Where did you even come from?!_

He limped inside, fleeing from the fire and prepared to lay his hands on the cat, almost grabbing it by the tail, before a vague memory surfaced.

_Wait.. that story my parents used to tell me about when I was three.. oh yeah, they said I was lucky I grabbed it by the back of the neck, or it would've scratched my face._

The man looked at the animal, standing on the edges of the seat and looking at him, and gently stretched his hands, careful not to get scratched while holding in an up-and-coming panic attack, and laid his hand on its scruff before slowly, tensely lifting it up, his bone-thin arm nearly snapping apart under the weight as he walked out of the shed and looked at the fire in front of him—grey smoke filled the air, drawing every ounce of effort out of him to keep breathing for dear life while he tried to hold himself together in front of a lone, painful death.

_I fucking deserved this. Or maybe I didn't? I didn't think it was gonna sprea- no, what kind of dumbass justification is this?_

A voice called, seemingly from the other side of the burning field.

" **Ssstoooopp!** "

It was the stranger, shouting manically loud enough for his voice to ring crystal-clear in the man's eardrums, almost as if he was breaking down. _Shit! He thinks I did it!_

He walked towards the pump; no dice. The power cable had been burned down by the expanding fire—a wild, scorching flame that would sooner or later reach the man's feet if he did not take action.

_How do I work with this? This is fucking pointless._

He looked at the cat in his arm.

_But the cat is more deserving of life than I probably am._


	15. Deliverance from Beneath

The rustling of bare feet over the heating grass was completely silenced by the crackling of the fire; there was no way anyone could hear anyone in this fiery wetland hellhole, unless one were to shout from the top of their lungs.

The stranger's voice hid no distress; even when shouting from a hundred yards away, and with the man falling into stupor, he'd burned a few words on the listener's eardrums. "…The garage…! **Keep Zin safe in the garage!** "

**_Tell me where the fuck your garage is, dumbass!_ ** _I'm the one at the asshole of this field, and I don't see it!_

_'_ _Zin' though, that's nice name for a cat._

_Well, I'm gonna die—_ his train of thought was cut off by a sharp, tearing feeling, like being stabbed and dismembered, _my fucking arm!_

The man, reflexively letting go of the cat, leaned down and slowly grabbed his arm by the elbow, closing his eyelids and taking a deep breath. _I let go! I… nah, he's safer without me. I'm just dead weight at this point._

_But maybe, I guess, just for one moment, I wasn't completely selfish._

_Or I hope so._

The smell of the burning smoke, however, choked every part of his throat as it filled his mouth and nostrils, and as he open his eyes again, he looked at the fire. Facing the reality of the situation, he stood silently watching; waiting for death to come collect its due on him. He turned once more to look at the cat, and found it following a path he hadn't noticed, venturing deeper into the tall trees past the cut-down stumps—likely the path it came from.

_Holy shit-is the garage he was talking about down here?_

The cat, unwittingly, led the man down a dark path downhill he could almost hear his knee joints creaking while following. They skirted the roots of several trees, before a wide wooden barn half-covered under massive branches and leaves revealed itself to him, with its barn doors open, and the man froze up again, startled, and looked the other way upon hearing the stranger's screams over the fire once again—almost unintelligible, but he thought he'd heard the word "battery" in-between what sounded like the stranger too overwhelmed to form anything sounding remotely coherent and banging on wood.

The cat sprinted inside, leaving a good half-minute to spare before he came crawling in, entered leaning on a door larger than him, panting and looking around inside to find it. Instead, he'd found something else, smack-dab in the middle of the barn—a half-wrecked vintage sedan, and by the looks of it, _a dead, rusty dirt-scraper that would make my dad's trashy Oldsmobile 88 look like an engineering masterpiece._

_A battery.. for a water pump, right? You would get one of those in.. yeah, this.._ _**a fucking car! I'm bringin' the bacon home!** _

_Actually, maybe I could just steal it to get the fuck away from.. uh, where the hell would I go anyway?_

"Forget it", he muttered to himself looking at the barebones car skeleton, and the large barn door with a padlock in front of it while slowly stepping in without losing his grip to the door at the entrance, until he'd heard the cat meowing from behind the door and pressing against it; he flinched, realizing he'd been pushing it into a tight corner, and lost his grip before collapsing on the gravel ground with a heavy thump, only his hand separating his head from the rubble—every bone in his fingers almost snapping in half between the ground and the sudden weight of his temple, as if it had been dropped into a crusher, not helped by his back wounds rubbing against the gravel only separated by the thinning fabric of his aged shirt.

The cat emerged from the door unscathed, and looked at the man who smiled, letting out a sigh of relief and began to make himself comfortable lying down, letting go of his legs before opening his eyes widely and gasping as he turned his head halfway. His dulled sight was then set on the underside of the car, picking up the contours of a bottle sitting under the loosely-hanging, dislocated steel bar where a rear fender would have been.

_A fuckin' bottle? Maybe it's a water bottle._

He crawled towards the garage, slowly propelling himself with his legs and arms to close the distance. The floor felt smoother inside the shed, like concrete; to him, a grace he was sure to remain thankful for. The cat's footsteps passed him by, and immediately following the slamming of his outward-folded hand against the dusty paved cement within range of the bottle, the sense of accomplishment was ruptured by a growl from the cat standing over it. Upon craning his neck to take a closer look at the hand, a hiss followed, and once he had a view of his hand, he panicked seeing claws extended, ready to slice through what was left of his sweaty palms, and pulled it away breathing heavily at the same moment the cat swung its paw. "Jesus! You could give my mom a run for the money!"

While the man tried to get himself up to move on to searching for the car's battery, bumping and pushing against the floor, the cat leaned to fit under the bumper, taking out the bottle with its paws, picked it between them and rolled it out from the shadow of the car, taking his attention—it was opaque, white plastic. An unintelligibly-written set of letters was inscribed in black print on the bottle.

The cat shook the bottle vigorously between its paws trying to open it, and gave up before long; the man, remembering the pending disaster, jolted sprinting along the car, coughing after every breath he took in as his forehead dripped of sweat.

The car's engine was fully exposed; wires were strung all over, and the pistons on the engine block were rugged, their top surface scraped thin from corrosion—and with other parts in similar condition, would leave no doubt that the vehicle was a hassle to even consider escaping in. He plunged his hands into the workings of the engine, sliding his fingers along a pair of thick cables before reaching their rusty clips, connected to the terminals of a heavy, grime-covered car battery.

After disconnecting the handles and tossing them away, the dust and grease against the hard plastic casing of the battery smeared itself on his hands, making the effort of lifting it out as gross as it was straining his near-lifeless arms; not that the grill he'd been leaning against for leverage was sanitary either, covering the rags he'd once called his sweatpants in a blackish smudge while cracking bits and pieces all over it. Grunts followed, as his already-sore throat shriveled to take away from the pain of holding the twenty-odd pound battery over his left shoulder, just enough for him to slowly step aside and carefully trudge along the right side of the car, watching his every step.

_That cat better not renovate my feet, or I'm throwing him out… alright, maybe I shouldn't even if he does._

A light tap on plastic, and a rolling sound preceded a very painful step—his foot twisted on the plastic bottle, making him lose his footing, and fall on his back. The weight of the battery was crushing him from the top down; all he could do was to wait for the inevitable thud, crack and acid leak while his temple was slammed flat on the concrete. Instead, the clack of it smashing against the casing of a small crumpled gas cylinder caught him off-guard, and he looked around, searching for the battery before finding it leaning on a loose driver's seat, held from crashing down on the ground only by a few tight ropes, and a chain on the underside.

The sight of a driver's seat on the right side of the car disoriented him, as blurry as everything was to him then; the acrid smell of the car's parts and the stench of newfound misery on his shirt took on the duty of keeping him awake until the cat hurled the bottle back at his face.

_…_

_Who knew a bottle could make me so fucking miserable? Not a bottle of alcohol,_ _**a plastic mystery bottle in some deranged old crazed gunman's garage.** _ _Guy probably snorts lines of his own coke in his spare time._

He laid his hand on the bottle, and lifted his head off of the ground with the other hand's arm, grabbed it and twisted the lid open. A cough and another after inhaling—his throat was sore, after all—and he sniffed the contents of the bottle before immediately regretting, tearing up; the sting of rubbing alcohol was not pleasant to the nostrils from up-close. The bottle immediately came down with a hard slam against the floor, and quite a few drops smattered themselves over his hand, leaving a chilling feeling as they evaporated in the heat. After a moment, the man took another look at the bottle, and at his feet; the cut was covered in greenish, slimy fluid and had swollen, surrounded by hardened blood fragments and soil.

The sight of the wound, left to rot, finally let a truth he wouldn't want to believe sink in: even if it were treated or his foot were amputated, his days were numbered in this world he was never ment to be a part of, and being killed by a machine would be the least painful way out.

And he grabbed the bottle once more. Sat up, and slowly poured out its contents all out, straight onto his wound and clenching his shaky fist. The wheezing and coughing that followed masked his agonizing screams, reduced to crying in front of the cat watching him spill it like a drunkard, all over his foot, his ankle, slowly moving away from the acrid-smelling puddle of alcohol, blood, dirt and pus that was forming before trailing off behind the car, and lying down.

Droplets were soon the only thing left, and with a clack, and a wobble, the bottle fell flat and rolled on the concrete.

Four fingers on one hand on the wall, and the other hand on a wide cylindrical welded beam by the driver's seat in lieu of a door held him up from the vile-looking puddle under his feet, propping him up. _If I wasn't going to cook, I would just lie down here and turn into a real corpse by the time I fall asleep._ Fatigue struck like a knife through his arms; the only thing keeping him as he picked up the weight, and carried it from the bottom up, slumping it over his shoulder, was the knowledge that he might be burned alive, if he didn't act—and on time, which was running out. _And if I'm going to die, it'll be in no hellfire._

He stepped around the then-asleep cat, headed down the door, his feet pressing against the rough gravel with the weight of the battery, making his way surrounded and choked by the ominous patch of trees that left nary a thing visible but the red blaze, the smoke filling the air to a nauseating choke. The tree stumps surrounding the field had been reduced to ashes, and soon enough, the rest of the forest would be on the line, and the man knew he'd be the first victim it would claim. His grazed soles, trampled over marsh and mud, were relieved once he'd dropped the weight of the battery, as slowly as possible, on top of the water pump, and laid his hands down on the pump's steel surface. The relief was short-lived, when the stranger's voice burrowed through the man's eardrums again, louder and closer than before…

He stood, still, inhaling the smoke and looking between the battery and the pump's cables, his mind gone entirely blank after noticing they didn't fit—almost like he'd taken a break of sorts, just from.. being alive, with vacant eyes, and a vacant soul.

The voice seemed to fade away, and for a moment, everything went quiet and bliss.

A cough quickly overcame him, and the shouting and crisp burning suddenly came in, clear again.. **"…the inverter!"** This time, from further away, _or closer? No.. everywhere.. nowhere._

_..Inverter.. holy shit, an electric inverter? That's what I needed? I really don't know shit about electricity._

A large black plastic brick, with loose jumper cables came crashing down, slapping the man once more back to reality. He looked at the window of the second floor, from across the fire: the window was open. A vaguely visible silhouette was inside; the stranger, he'd guessed.

_…_ _He almost fucking killed me._

_Again._

The smoke covered his eyes, and his nose; everything was fading together, into an abstract.. mess. He loosely set up the alligator cable to connect to the wide box between his hands, hooking it to the terminals, and took off the old power cable's socket, plugging in the other one into the matching socket, and pressed a button arbitrarily. A mildly irritating buzzing rose, for a few seconds before water came spraying out of the pump's hose.

He kicked the hose around lazily, slumping down on the pump while the fire slowly withered away. He watched the smoke disperse, and only the ashen remains of the field left, with all the vegetables he'd seen once, not two hours ago, all reduced to pitch-black remains on the burned soil, and the rotor at the center of it all.

_Jesus! The sky's a fucking fire hazard._

_…_

The scorching of the ever-present sun on his back numbed as he slowly walked back to the door, twice as slow as he'd left and thrice as exhausted. losing his breath before pushing the door open with his skull, holding on to the walls before collapsing and lying down, eyes closed. The smell of the old house's interior, and hearing the familiar whirring of his partner's gears in the distance helped put him at ease, if just for a moment-

**_-STOP._ **

_Fuck.. water. I forgot to drink…_

The clamping of the stubby's metal feet hopping over the floorboards was unmistakable. Eyes barely open, the searing light bled in, and a heap of books out the front door. Two hands crunched his jaws in by the cheeks, and spun him seeing eye-to-eye with the beams on the ceiling before he'd noticed the stranger's goggled, half-burnt tan face again, before the latter stood up and ran. The particular chirpy creaking of the closet door was followed by the sound of a bucket banging against the ground, and frenzied running before everything faded away; a trip to oblivion interrupted with all the comfort of a freight train crushing him in a splash of water to the face.

He opened his mouth, hoping to swallow, only to start manically coughing as the mineral-tasting fluid flooded into his mouth and throat, almost choking as he felt bile rising in his throat before gulping. His eyelids felt heavy, almost as if soldered together as he tried to blink, and his arms were all but powerless as he'd gotten picked up in the stranger's gloves, soaked in the man's sweat, blood and dirt particles.

"Stay awake—Don't-don't stop breathing." the stranger sputtered from behind his head, quietly—stressing the wrong accented syllables in every word did not put him much at ease while he tried to make out the coherent words in his half-conscious lethargy. His body was reduced to a mere aged plastic bag, being carried around cables and wires at every turn.

The room felt emptier, and bleaker than the first time he'd seen it, in a way that oddly brought back images of his home: furniture was moved out, rugs and cupboards, cookers leaving dark spots on the ground and the walls where they were before. The only thing that remained, other than the claustrophobic wiring from who-knows-what sort of contraption was underground, was his partner, standing still, not bothering to make a single peep save for the sound of its gears whirring, firmly scoping every inch of his reddened skin.

_Urgh.. nngh.._

The man opened his mouth, breathing in and coughing, and the stranger turned to the left, revealing a weary staircase of planks nailed to a couple of beams. The creaking of each step, and the feeling of death oncoming in every aching muscle of his body drove him to scream inside until he knew he'd made it in the attic. A dark room, lit by one window and a strange yellowish light coming from behind a whole slew of wires, buttons and levers.

_Jesus.. fucking Christ._

The stranger's hands started to let go of his sides, and slowly dropped the man on his back without the slightest bump; even then, his scalp was torturously being skinned with a knife as it made contact with the ground—all overcame him with a longing to escape from the hell his body trapped him in.

_Gear, or whatever your retarded name is.. I wish I could leave this shithole, or kill myself, but I think I'm already dead now._


	16. A Most Dangerous Game

**-Bunker Server File System v1.1-**

**-AUTHENTICATION-**

**CODE: **********************

**Privilege Level 7 access granted.**

**-HARDWARE CHECK-**

**00 22 03 00 3a 65 02 00 d7 19 05 00 00 00 00 .-..…**

**5a 01 00 00 a2 00 10 d0 0c 00 07 e0 00 08 00 #...-.[]…**

**STATUS: COMPLETE.**

**-cd MK:\logs\**

**-dir**

**Volume in drive MK is UNIT_EX_3A.**

**Volume Serial Number: 42O** **CF.**

 **1194** **2/03/01** - **logFirstBoot_030111942**

 **1194█** **/05/04 - log_04051194█**

**1194█** **/05/07 - log_05051194█**

**1194█** **/05/07 - log_07051194█**

**4 Files, 49 data block(s)**

**0 Folders, 0 data block(s)**

**-MK:\logs\log_04051194█**

**Starting** **…**

I honestly don't know what to do at this point. If it weren't for Operator 42O's orders, I would've had a breakdown in front of the Resistance.

I wandered in, finding trees with strange arrows carved onto them, with a sharp object. So I followed them. Maybe this is some sort of hint? A message? I don't know, and I'm hoping all this training with 10D is going to make a difference now that I'm assigned alone. That one-handed sword we took 801S' odd jobs for, I'm not letting go to waste.

I tear through swamps, with my Treacherous Covenant at the ready as I look to every side, hiding my fear of what I could find, and suddenly…I think I see something. An android. But it's not moving.

I run as fast as I can with my weapon out, listening for the sounds of machine lifeforms—there aren't any, and I feel less and less comfortable in my boots as I approach my target. I clench my cheeks in horror, and hold the tip of my sword closer to my face: not only is he long dead, but his skin was melted off of his frame.

I extend a hand out of my sleeve, turn him around to see his front, and load a hologram of the face they gave me.

It's a perfect match! His body was cut cleanly through the abdomen with a blue liquid dripping through his wires: oil and coolant, mixed together. I've seen it before, and the memories it brings back itch at the back of my mind.

I look at my pod, almost as if I'm pleading to it to let me leave, or help me somehow. "Pod, analyze this unit and its surrounding regions. If there's any data left we can access, let me know!" but despite everything, I know that I can't change this now, so I'll need to be the bearer of bad news.

"Analysis: unit shows no signs of life. The cause of death was to a 99.97% certainty a charged attack, pattern matching the Type-4O Blade, a YoRHa-issue weapon. Hypothesis: this unit was murdered by a YoRHa android. No salvageable data found."

"Wh-why?"

"Analysis: this unit is of an older model line, and has minor defects in memory modules."

"I see." I quietly respond, thinking of a way to figure this situation out.

A YoRHa android..? I start to form an idea of who this might have been, from what we were told by the Council of Humanity.

I walk up to a corner, and find a trail of dark molten metal stretching out as far as I can see.

…

I turn to Pod, and urgently come closer to whisper. "We can't stay here! Call Command, I need them to send my flight unit down. I'll need to come back to investigate later, with reinforcements!"

Pod remains silent, and I lean down, hunching myself over the ground. I wish 10D was here.

A minute later, it answers. "Flight unit location marked on map."

I run as fast as I can towards the marker on my minimap, only to stumble by a strange structure. Tiny machine parts loosely piled on top of each other, metal scraps, and a large plank covering an interior. "Analysis: no enemy found," Pod reassures me.

I throw my sword at the block of wood, piercing through it. Not a sound comes, other than that of the tip of my blade striking down on dirt as it falls down, and it reappears by my side.

I wander in. What I see here, isn't something any machine would've built. Before I lay my sleeve over a dusty drawer by my side, a hologram flashes at my eyes, jolting me in place.

Operator 42O's face surprises me with a look of concern, and I anxiously try to string together a sentence in my mind to explain the rush of information flowing through my mind.

"This is Operator 42O speaking to 5S. I need to know what's the matter with your flight unit request."

**-end**

**End of log_04051194█**

* * *

· **Translation mode: Internal data only.**

" **Machine.** Stay down here, and don't come up." the stranger said, tensed in his tone and looking off slightly to the side of the back door the man had left from, "We're preparing for the worst." and looked back at the machine, "so carry anything you can out the front door. We will get the laundry later."

The finger was pointed firmly at the machine from above, and he vanished into the yellowish-red sheen surrounding what little it saw of the ceiling and attic, before messily throwing heaps of books, compasses, rulers, wooden tables and desk parts and folded-up sheets of paper all of varying sizes down the stairs, over the ground and the rug. The machine picked up the first book that came by it, and read the title: "Feline Physiology." _Certainly an odd subject. I cannot protest however, knowing my similar interest in studying humans,_ it put the book down a mere instant before being smacked with the sudden drop of a ragged, white sleeping bag with a hood turned brown by years of dust and grime, and a tear in the foot box.

As the machine's look centered firmly on the objective of its order, the stranger's voice spoke out of the blue, almost magnanimous yet unsettling, with its accent and pronounced rhythm. "I dedicate myself.. to learning about my surroundings. And my memory isn't perfect. I know, somewhere, that this mind of mine was looking to accomplish something."

The thumping—and occasional snapping of a table leg, along with the stranger's yelling; likely directed outside, it thought, were barely loud enough to mask the terrifying screams of an impending wildfire. In those moments, it still thought to itself, _a researcher such as myself knows the value of knowledge._ And that thought made it carry on its head, and hands, despite its joints creaking and almost breaking, every page of notes it couldn't immediately jot down in its memory, every book written in an old world language that it couldn't process, and every drawer, every table, in that order, until the flame's red faded away from the windows.

The attic, it noticed, reverted to a dimmer yellowish glow, and the man pushed through the door, falling in agony, reminding the machine of its own search.

 _It seems likely now... that is he dead,_ it looked at the dark, reddened eyelids on his dry, dirt-and-scar-covered face and corpse-like, withered frame.

The armored resident rushed down, and lifted him up, taking on his weight and slumping him upstairs. The cables strewn around the room seemed to start shifting in color, and a dreadful silence washed in from the attic down on the machine, save for the single sound of a switch flipping. The machine however, turned around and noticed the bag that'd remained by its side.

It picked up the sleeping bag, folded it four times in its small hands, carried it on top of its head while climbing each and every step of the staircase at a crawl pace, to make a point to move as silently as possible on the creaky floorboards. It slowly turned its head up, rubbing its metal casing against the fabric of the bag to get a clearer view of the attic's interior; the stranger's hardhat facing away, in front of a cloud of white particles floating around some tubes, electronic circuits and hydraulics stacked on top of each other, in a metal grid. The unaware stranger's voice spoke up loudly. "Machine—if you're still here, move the sleeping bag back up in a short time."

_I must know what is ongoing in that room._

The stubby climbed to the top of the stairs, and found itself facing the green of its own eyes reflected off of a saw blade before dropping the sleeping bag on the floor, by the man's side.

"I said, in a short time," the stranger stated, his accent converging with that of the man. "I have things to take care of."

 _A surgical saw,_ it noted—in the gloved hand of the stranger, who stood still, shakily wiping the blade with a piece of cloth, before sliding it into an open pouch on his belt, and dropping the bladed object into a toolbox by his feet with a clang, next to the man's unmoving body lying flat, stomach on the ground.

 _"I have been ordered to transport this bag upstairs by yourself, and I have merely followed suit. However, it seems you were engaging in an activity of some kind, and I inquire as to its nature."_ the stubby spoke, in its monotone.

He shot a glare at the machine looking around the attic, resting his hand on the closed lid of a metal cylinder built into the rack. "I told you to stay down. We need resources right now," the stranger said, keeping his tone straight before spacing out his words, "food and water," before cutting himself off and turning to look at a dark, dusty tungsten bulb on top of the container. "I do, and your partner does."

The machine looked at the man's body, and back at the resident, bobbing its head slightly to look at his features. _"It matters that it is explained to me what may, or may not have been done to my partner."_

The stranger opened the lid, revealing the container's dark interior, and slid out the rifle part of his weapon from the side, followed by the rectangular object that was attached to it.

 _I will attempt to investigate at a later time. I must now find a way to make sure he does not remain in my partner's proximity, however,_ the machine judged by itself.

"A check of my medical supplies, is what I was doing…" he protested, "I prefer to remain on my own, in such moments." holding his weapon upwards by his side, before sliding it into his belt's holster.

The machine stood still, observing the condition of the resident's muted-greenish frog skin pattern polymer armor—not a single tear or rip, and made a suggestion. " _We are in need of resources, as you have said. Therefore, it appears to me that it would be favorable to mobilize for resource-gathering."_ picking up the edge of the bag's loose-gripping synthetic fiber by its feet and lifting it in its creaking hands.

"In that case," the stranger walked up to the opposite end of the bag and grunted while bending over, "we will put him in the sleeping bag."

_…It may turn out difficult to inspect my partner without his supervision, if he is laid out inside this bag._

The two dragged the worn-out bag, swinging it next to the man's body, and the machine grabbed the man's dingy feet, before being met with a look from the resident's face. "Your.. hands seem to be impressed on his skin," he noted looking at a patch of marks resembling its fingers, tightly imprinted on his skin—almost as if it were branded.

" _We have found ourselves in conditions where travel options were limited, as you might have known from what you'd observed on our first encounter._ " the machine replied near-instantly.

The machine lifted the feet, and repeatedly hopped closer to the stranger, both carrying the man before the stubby bounced its feet sideways, and slid his heels down into the hood, and the two moved around the body, attempting to fit it in tightly, glove on the left, and bent cold metal fingers on the right. As they lowered his waist to the ground to insert his lower half in, the stubby turned itself to face the bag, and kept its look on the man, before jumping forward without letting go, pulling his feet out of a now-crumpled sleeping bag. The stranger, alarmed, shouted " **What is it that can't be helped with you?!** " and strengthened his hold, leaning down and remaining still; the unconscious man had almost fallen through the staircase, one foot dangling, leaning over to the right towards a painful death, or another concussion.

The machine turned its look toward him, and answered without wavering in its monotone. _"I have applied a forward force too early."_ The resident turned his look to the machine, and took a step back to the right, dropping the man on his side, over the sleeping bag.

The stubby stood idly, staring at him. _"I have merely committed a timing error."_

The stranger suddenly straightened his posture, and abruptly began a march toward the machine, which leapt back twice before finding itself grabbed by the body, suspended in mid-air. _"I demand that you cease transporting me in this manner,"_ it spoke louder before turning its head around, and finding itself being held out through the window, to be dropped at a moment's notice.

The stranger's voice came up from behind. "You... will be dropped from here, if you do not cease your irritated act. I…"

_It appears that his confusion between participles hints to a limited proficiency in the English language._

Looking below, was a thirteen-foot drop, that would be followed by a bang, clang and an oversized, rusty clockwork toy broken in pieces.

"…will not tolerate you…"

An instant later, it bobbed its head to its right, and noticed a laundry line within swinging distance behind a thick bush, holding tens of dry clothing items.

_I fail to comprehend the decision-making process that has driven him not to merely use his weapon to deliver a threat towards myself._

…disrupting my operations." he spoke, a muted yet pauseless fury in his tone, before pulling the stubby back in. "Now," he dropped the machine softly on the hardwood floor, "you will remain still."

" _I will._ " it answered, taking a long look at him taking the rifle out of his holster, opening the lid and inserting it back in; the toolbox inches from its foot. They stood still, as the resident stared on at the bulb until it lit up with the sound of a bell ringing, a muted shade of brown from all the built-up gunk that drowned out the white.

The container's lid opened by his hand, and he pulled out the weapon. "We leave the house now." he ordered, in the same tone unchanged. The machine followed him down around the dropped man, down the staircase and out the back door of the house, and came to a standstill facing the cooked-and-crooked remains of the destroyed power line, drooping into one of many puddles fed by the hose left running.

" _It seems that it would be favorable for me to remain indoors,"_ the machine suggested looking at the head of the resident standing in front of it. The latter responded silently, by picking it up in his left arm, and pulling out a utility knife from his belt as he walked out into the field with his right, swinging it swiftly at a cut of the thick cable, and leaning over to grab it with his left. The metal lining on the arm of the stranger's smooth Kevlar armor tightened against the machine's body, as he sprinted through the flooded swath of land, water splashing over its eyes and face with every step of his boots, and the latter took a hold of the hose, pointing it upward until the machine finally found itself face-to-face with the water pump.

"My hands are full. Press the button," the stranger ordered, and the machine's hand shook as it reached toward a small button on the side of the bluish cylinder, before lying its finger on it and pressing it, and the obnoxious screeching of unending hose spillage turned to complete silence. The stranger, now stepping softly on the wetland, thumped his boots on increasingly sticky mud before the stubby had seen itself passing by a small wooden booth, with dark-yellowish stains on its bottom. _It appears that this is the facility for bodily waste disposal my partner has entered,_ it duly noted as it passed by, and hit its foot on a tree stump, falling on its side, and finding its shoulder being tied to it with the cut cable section, looking up to find the stranger standing above and fastening a knot.

" _I would greatly appreciate to know the reason as to why I am being currently physically restrained, in this manner._ " the stubby, lying motionless on its back, said in its monotone. The stranger, looking back down through his goggles, gave one sentence: "I will gather equipment," and walked away, to whereabouts the machine could not make out, disappearing behind the tree stump as it tried to turn its head on the ground and set itself upright, to no avail. The sound of a large wooden door moving barely creaked through its sensors, and the stranger later appeared in front of the machine as briskly as he'd disappeared earlier, carrying several small metal cylinders, each marked with a flammable substance symbol. He pulled out his rifle, this time holding it with one hand, and pulling away on the hanging prism-like object with the other, before lightly pulling the trigger.

_It seems that he has been highly angered, and may possibly execute me, if not warn me one final time._

A heated projectile of concentrated energy phased through the cable, destroying the knot and letting the machine loose. It finally propped itself upright with a swift movement from both of its arms, and looked at the stranger, who walked away shortly into the deeper woods before stopping and looking back at it. "You will follow me now."

The machine obliged, and creakily hopped over, following him down into the shade. Tall trees passed by, and its surroundings grew darker as the two made their way, until a small, reddish-brown hare fell rolling down from a knee-high slope in front of them, limping with a third leg protruding from its neck. Its fur was unevenly thick, and completely hid whatever ears, if any, that it may have had; the whirring of the machine's gears, and the stranger's raising of its weapon at its eye met with simple blinking from its only distinguishable eye. The sound of the rifle's trigger pulling, the flash of glowing yellowish pellets of light energy firing out of its barrel preceded the explosion of the hare's insides mixing with its outsides in being shredded to a fuming, rotting paste spread over the dim-lit grass, dirt and shrubs.

" _Is there an explanation I may have for the reason behind what had just occurred?_ " the machine, looking at the hardhat-topped figure from behind it hastily kept up with, asked. A few steps later, he clenched his hands into fists and raised them, "That is not," he showed his face to the machine, scoping it with a stare that shot darts through his goggles, "wild… **life!** " he insisted, punctuating his every word with weighty movements of his fists in the air.

The thumping of his boots stopped upon the rise of a distant boar's squeal—a voice he'd been more eager to hear than he despised that of the machine. The step of his boots gently teetered closer to the edge on the grass, leaning down and reaching for one of the bright-blue metal cylinders on his belt. Taking a moment to check the flame pictogram, he tossed it out into the air, and eyed it narrowly as it dropped, nearly vanishing into the void below.

The machine, however, veered off to the side, a couple of feet away, over a block of granite, and scourged the view within the depths of the ravine beneath the cliff: the ruins of a freeway built over a gorge canal, covered in countless scraps and bits of corroded metal, and countless carcasses shattered under dead machines of varying sizes, _undoubtably of inaccurately-reconstructed vehicles of human make._

A boar, no smaller than the sedan that crunched into a flat panel under its legs, left dents for prints on the roof of a school bus, hunching its face over the glands and loose-hanging berries from the overgrown weeds and plants that surrounded—and overshadowed—bales of rusting vehicle parts and rotting tires, on top of cracked, faltering tarmac. As its snout leaned down to the floor, it tried to bite down on the stranger's thrown canister, only for it to slip out of its mouth time after time. The stranger's hands shook as he stared down his sights, his breath losing its pace as the long rifle settled down in his arms and fired a single shot, aimed at a tiny, rolling dot hidden a league down.

An explosion flared up, to the sound of gas blasting metal to shreds, engulfing the pig and the plants it'd been ruminating in a yellow fireball, and tearing it limb from limb into large splatters of blood, muscle and bone, cooking under the sizzling heat as stacks of vehicles and scraps of machines shook and fell from their places. The banging of metal and glass rang in echo throughout the divide, smashing and breaking around the animal's splattered viscera.

The voice of the stranger was reduced to acute screeching as he let out a wordless cry, a blindsiding lightshow of projectiles ricocheting throughout the divide's depths, striking dirt, rock and plant alike. The machine shifted its look to the stranger lying on his side, looking away from the chaos and holding on to the ground by his head with his rifle up in the air. His goggles had fallen off of his eyes, and it made out his clenched, half-burnt eyelids in the split moment before he'd set them back in place with a gesture of his free hand; the machine stepped down, and came closer before stopping an arm's length from the handle of the rifle laid down by his hand, silent as a pin drop.

An exhale preceded his next order. "Your next action will be to move down to the destroy-" he huffed, "destroyed road below." he finished his sentence, as he stood himself up, holding his rifle tightly as the machine looked at it, before packing it into its holster.


	17. Truth and Trickery

The stranger heaved himself upright, bits of the metal lining on his armor clanging as he lifted his weapon off the ground. A tiny, razor-thin object fell out of his pouch and made a barely-audible clack upon slamming the rocky floor and bouncing towards the steep edge of the ravine.

" _Your belongings!"_

"Ah— **ah!,"** he gasps and turns his head to find circuitry cacophonously skidding against stone into oblivion. The machine was brutally shoved down, about to take a drop hundreds of feet to the same fate as the iron gorilla that had once nearly turned it to scrap metal. All that was left to do, was to face the rugged, impossibly steep cliff that overlooks the dark abyss below the decrepit freeway of dead boars and rusting cars.

_I suppose a system shutdown is due for now._

The seemingly inevitable descent was halted, and the machine groggily turned its head around to look up. "The ci..rcuit is under you. Pick it up before it falls." The armored gunman's brawn-like build towered above it. He leaned down and gripped it by the leg, tightly pressing down on its creaking knee.

Its head slammed with a bang against the pale-yellow rocky wall of the ditch, and a small pebble split from the stone fell, taking sand with it.

" _As I will,_ " the stubby held to its flat tone. After a slow-and-steady turn of its head to look up—or more accurately, down, it caught sight of a palm-sized piece of foliage growing from the moss between the edges of two rocks covered in the debris that had fallen.

_This might very likely be the only-_

"It is visible?" The stranger's voice made its eyes flash in surprise for a moment, coming off more as if he'd made a statement than a question.

_His strange syntax, and choice of tone is ambiguously threatening. Regardless, I am not one to take more risks than is deemed necessary._

" _I am in the process of fetching the circuit board."_

A moment after trying to turn its left arm, it heard a loud snap coming from within its body. A gust of oil leaked from its side, fading into the dark as the biped lost control of its shoulder; its precious arm had gone wild and free, and so would the rest of its body if another freak event followed. "Machine… have you destroyed **my** -"

" _Negative. The sound you have witnessed is the triggering of my precise mechanical mode, a purpose-built function of my left arm."_

"Do not try to fool me, machine. I know you have no such thing." The machine froze in place. "I will drop you if you destroy my circuit."

The machine took a moment to focus its lenses more closely on the objective a few inches below its eyes. _Proportionally to the time I spend with this individual, my certainty of his complete and dangerous mental instability exceeding that of the human in his revolting appearance and demeanor alike, grows. In addition, I may have to deactivate my optical backlights in order to better discern the color of the object from that of the plant._

With a soft whir, it slowly adjusted its elbow and wrist and lifted its squarish, claw-like index finger over the pebble, and clenched it under its thumb before taking it off and dropping it into the dark beneath, not to hear so much as a pop from the scree.

Grasping between the leaves with all three of the measly appendages on its hand, the machine silently cursed its _constantly unfavorable proportions,_ for its fingertips kept straddling the exterior of the moss. Admitting its failure, or even risking its life to ask to be lowered _by so much as the width of a blade of grass,_ however, seemed to it a suicidal folly. Not even the man, who was now a long walk, a dozen awakenings, and several panic attacks away from where his partner was in body and mind, would have wanted to take the risk. One swipe after another, and all it could see was green at this close of a range—eventually, it decided that it would give up on light itself.

· **Internal backlighting shut down.**

The darkened view made its entire surroundings appear as bleak as the fate it wanted to avert so dearly for itself over one god-forsaken _specimen of an extinct race as dim-witted as he is naturally violent._

A minuscule corner of a piece of plastic reared itself into its view from within the clump of moss, and the stubby carefully pulled it out by the skin of its fingertips, leveled the palm of its hand, and shut its fingers into a fist with a small chip inside. _My fortune is as fickle as it is mysterious._

The machine quickly delivered in its steady monotone without skipping a cycle. _"I have secured it in my hand. It would be time for you to return me to my upright ground position now."_

Its eyes lit up once more; save for its feet slamming and scraping against rock, it was being raised to relative safety. The glow in its eyes returned as it slid up, before hearing the grunting of the stranger grabbing it with his right hand, and putting it upright. The machine held out its hand with the tiny chip inside and was almost forcefully ripped out of its palm by the resident, leaving its left arm swinging and squeaking.

 _It seems that dropping the item onto the ground for him to pick up would have been a better idea,_ it duly noted.

The resident handled the chip tightly at the fingertips of his gloves, sliding it under the stock of his rifle and shoving it within the wires grafted onto it. His other hand yanked on a cable from within the metallic prism hanging upside-down from it, and made it meet with the chip; a zap sounded, sparks flew past the machine's head, and a widening halo inscribed with floating runes spun around the barrel of the gun.

 _I may not be prepared for this,_ the machine decided as it backed away from the stranger aiming his mutated rifle firmly at the roof of a car on the freeway, by the sizzling remains of the dead boar and the exploded gas tank.

With the circuit now tucked in the depths of his armor vest, he pulled the trigger. A long, feverish string of glowing energy grew straight out of the gun's barrel with a hurl, sending him flying down towards his target. The machine stood over, watching him break his fall over the roof sheet of a hatchback and snap the radio antenna like a dry twig, without so much as a snap heard from above.

Junk and stray weeds packed themselves neatly under his weight as he hoisted himself up, holstered his weapon and walked over to various tipped-over scraps of metalwork and tires, shaking and arching himself to push them inch by inch with an aching groan while picking mucky, brownish bits of bleeding viscera and fat off in the dark from in-between vines, lugnuts and brake plates. Stuffing them into various bags on his suit of armor, the fleshy chunks of falling bits hid in the same earthy colors that cloaked him in the forest.

A side-view mirror reared itself from his side, falling over from above. Holding it closer to himself, the reflection takes a distinct shape. Himself. He fidgets uncontrollably for a moment, before tossing it away into the open grill above the fender. An indistinct sound in the distance drew a panicked breath from him, sending him into a deliriously agitated crawl toward a spot of light. Wads of grass, scrap and entrails were caked behind his arms, and over the metal and polymer lining of his suit. Each passing moment, his breath grew louder with one hand's grip on an exhaust pipe above, and another grabbing away at the mucky paving.

Once the blaze of daylight struck his neck, his arms pressed themselves like pistons screaming against the tarmac as he rushed his legs out from under the dislocated front-left door of a sedan, climbed over its trunk over to the roof and looked around: all to be seen was sandstone walls made of millions of years worth of cracks and strata, bushes, man-sized trees carrying an occasional berry, and long-dead vehicles, nothing that would seem to be a candidate for moving anytime soon.

He turned to look at the cliff he'd gotten down from; the machine stood on the edge still, idly watching him. Still, however, its position was off; it seemed to be closer to the block of granite to its left than when he'd gotten down.

The gun pulled out of its holster in his hands, he opened his pouch, grabbed the chip and hotwired it to the rifle—seeing the sparks and the runes form around the barrel, he aimed and pulled the trigger. The electronic sound permeating hundreds of feet in the air and the suddenly-closer thump of his boots set the machine jolting back from its place. From the other side of the ravine, a smudgy black shape flew out from the trees, and the machine covered its head with its remaining good arm, before looking up and hearing the flaps of wings: it was a crow.

The stranger heaved himself over the boulder off onto the ground, and stood himself up. A brief exchange of stares between the two ensued, interrupted by the sudden silence of the bird's wings.

A look of anxiety took over his face; he turned his head to look into the woods. "Go there." he pointed to a dark corner, with the faint shape of vines and leaves covering it.

Led by the shaking stubby, he stormed off toward a bush, shoulders square, weapon upfront and his sights at eye level aimed squarely ahead. Tall grass and bush twigs slowed down the pace of his boots as he eased his step to remain quiet, until he happened upon the same hare he'd shot earlier being pecked apart.

The bird turned to look around, craned its neck up at the trees and flew away the moment the stubby hopped in front of it.

"It was not here when I killed it." The gun-toting hard-hatter scolded it, blending confusion and anger. "It was moving… this was done by you."

The mechanical biped looked down at the corpse, and back at the gunman. " _In your absence, I have witnessed an oncoming predator. The act of moving this hare served to distract it from my position."_ it maintained its monotone, with its best effort not to betray any fear.

"What preda..tor?" his voice grew quieter, scolding the stubby with the barrel of his weapon between its eyes. The last syllable almost faded from his mouth, giving rise to a nearby rising mechanical clunk.

To his ears, this was a call to arms, and to the biped, it ment its eyes were no longer staring at a dry, sun-battered steel spitfire mouth of death.

Looking at the hare, his face seemed to grow tense, prompting the machine to turn its head around.

" _This was it._ " it took a couple of steps back, raising its right arm in front of its face.

Two spots of red light drew themselves on the grass in front of the two: a four-legged, slim machine with a long flexible tail hopped down from above, pouncing on the hare. Claws extended themselves from its limbs, tearing the carrion into neat little chunks and gnashing teeth brought themselves to the front of its broken skull, savagely devouring the remains of the dead animal and reducing them to paste in mere seconds. Its reddened eyes turned then towards its next target: the stranger.

A fevered mechanical screech ignited from the metal hound as its eyes shifted from green to a bloody shade of red. In the split second its legs arched back in anticipation, he rapidly pulled the trigger and cried out in panic, firing a row of glowing pellets that struck its frame and steered it sideways in mid-air over the stubby. He turned to face his enemy with a swish, kicked the tiny stubby aside and fired some more, before ducking to dodge the predator's next leap. The stubby, holding balance against a tree trunk with its right hand, turned to look at the stranger, not anymore troubling himself with the lambasted biped.

_The opportunity presents itself, at last._

* * *

**-AUTHENTICATION-**

**CODE: **********************

**Privilege Level 7 access granted.**

**-HARDWARE CHECK-**

**00 22 03 00 3a 65 02 00 d7 19 05 00 00 00 00 .-..…**

**5a 01 00 00 a2 00 10 d0 0c 00 07 e0 00 08 00 #...-.[]…**

**STATUS: COMPLETE.**

**-cd MK:\logs\**

**-dir**

**Volume in drive MK is UNIT_EX_3A.**

**Volume Serial Number: 42OCF.**

**11942/03/01 - logFirstBoot_030111942**

**1194█/05/04 - log_04051194█**

**1194█/05/07 - log_05051194█**

**1194█/05/07 - log_07051194█**

**4 Files, 49 data block(s)**

**0 Folders, 0 data block(s)**

**-MK:\logs\log_04051194█**

**Starting…**

**Continue at last point? (Y/N)**

**-Y**

**Reading…**

"Their second-in-command, the one they sent me to find… he's dead." I barely restrained myself from shouting that last word. Operator 42O was prone to starting escalating shouting matches, until she was later threatened with revoking privileges for making too much noise around her fellow O-types. So instead, she adopted an almost angry look whenever she'd grow irritated out of worry. I can't say it was easy for me to look at, at first, but I learned to ignore it over time.

I try to not draw attention to myself, covering my nose mid-sentence as I notice a strange smell. "I analyzed his attack patterns with POD's help, and the results matched up to a fugitive YoRHa unit. And I'm a scanner, so this is too dangerous for me." I hope she isn't going to hold me here for long with questions…

"5S? Did you check your consciousness data properly while you were at the Resistance camp? You know, you're on an important job after tomorrow."

No! I mean yes! I mean… I shouldn't get this lost in my thoughts when I'm expected to be listening.

I caught myself trying to come up with an answer on the spot. "Oh, yes," I paused, "uh-"

"Most scanners work alone on far more dangerous situations than this. Are you **sure,** " she insisted, "that you want me to call for backup? You've made mistakes before, and flight units aren't cheap to fly or maintain."

POD thankfully had chimed in. "Affirmative: we have decided that is the best course of action. Coordinates of our position and other critical waypoints will be sent to you."

"Understood. I'll call for support." The mildly annoyed bun-haired operator's face disappeared from view, and the words "TRANSMISSION ENDED" finally showed up.

Sometimes, I'm glad she's my assigned Operator, and at others, she's a pain. But it's something all us Scanners have to live with, I suppose. You can't be the intel gatherer for a war without getting a bit paranoid from time to time.. sigh.

I lowered my voice and looked at POD, placing my hand on his side. "So, any estimate on how much time it'll take for a response?"

"Estimate: approximately four minutes."

I walked over to the drawer, and leaned down. The amount of dust settled under it indicates it's been here for quite some time, and the moisture marks on its grain showed it wasn't quite taken care of, and if yesterday's weather announcement was any indication, the rain wasn't helping at all. I pulled my long sleeve back, and opened it with my hands. A pen and a notebook were inside.

What could be in there? I'll be the first to admit: it's not polite to look in other people's belongings, but this is as important as anything else while I'm on a mission.

I pick up the notebook, pull it out and flip its cover open with my own two hands. POD softly hums to my ear as he hovers right next to me to take a closer look of his own at the contents.

...What's this writing? I can't make sense of whatever language these inscriptions are in. I flip the rest of the pages, looking for anything I can read...

Wait!

Something just fell down. A card of some sort? And with a picture of a deformed bald man's face on it.

POD spoke, my body shifting to the direction of his voice. "Notification: An allied unit has been dispatched to Unit 5S' position."

Alright then; it's decided: I'll take a deeper look into this later. For now, I'm putting this back where I found it.

A voice startles me from behind. My legs lose their grip on the floor and I nearly trip… it's just 7B and her POD. "5S? They told me you wanted backup. Looks like it's safe here… except for the smell. Good thing I'm here to help with that last part!" she chuckled, _at least that I agree with her about._ "I know what you're thinking, I'll let you have some when we're back."

...Wait, how in the world did she read my mind?

"Hey. Do you actually believe what they tell us about how some rogues can be extremely dangerous? Come on..."

7B was a brute who towered over me, and with an attitude to match. She grabbed me by the shoulder, and dragged me out of the shelter. I felt her weight leaning sideways against me. Her sharp earrings tugged on my hair almost as strongly as I felt like pushing her away from me. She put her arm around my neck with a cheeky grin on her face. "The guy they killed, he's an old Resistance model. We're called the next generation, and we have an R&D division for a reason. Command even puts us through mandatory upgrades every now and then!" I couldn't even hear myself think over her spiel while she pulled me in her tread.

I did not like being dragged around like this, and it didn't make me any more at ease that she wasn't taking me or the situation seriously.

I can't take any more of this.

I certainly wasn't going to do this again until I could do it with somebody who understands me, and not under the pressure of a mission.

**End of log_04051194█**

* * *

_Off the corner of his vision, the man saw a fast-moving, small object, and instinctively turned to peek, finding that the spherical creature had abandoned them to hide between the roots of a tree, and let the moose run wild._

The creature brewed a trail of dust and dirt in its wake as it backtracked its previous path, fumbling through the mud-and-pebbled forest landscape. It followed the boar's prints, then the large, squarish footprints the stubby left behind along with the tracks of the man being dragged. _I hope the old man doesn't hurt my friends while I'm gone!_

 _Cog looked terrible last I saw him, so I'm gonna give him the stuff he wanted for free this time! I bet they'll thank me when I get back!_ note: remove this later by using show don't tell

The sheer speed of its roll ramped up as it approached the slope away from the house; its face was nigh-invisible in the blur of its meteoric race through the woods, and its path began to wobble before it veered off into mid-air.

Mutters came out of its mouth, barely audible enough for it to hear its own voice. "I'm Part Man, the Part Man of the Woods, serving only the best goods.."

It bounced off the branches of one tree to the next, lightly passing as a feather through slews of leaves like hammocks, branches like tightropes and boards, pine trunks like poles to be dodged, sprawling roots like twisted, twined pipes that contorted around the rusted remains of machine units. High and low ground alternated in its movement like counterpoint, rhythmed by the occasional chitter of wild birds flying out of its path and the distant yowls and squeaks of wildlife.

"...Under a mighty tree, always with a smile of glee…"

A left turn off a root, and after some skating through the innards of the cylindrical remains of a machine: it found itself right in front of the old slanted watchtower. Motionless androids and machines impaled on each other's weapons and smothered in each other's oil littered the floor around the entrance, and it narrowly moved between them into the dimly-lit inside; sunlight only flowed in from the entrance, and the top a couple hundred feet away, partly blocked by the greedy leaves of a monstrously large cedar that seemed to scrape the clouds in the sky.

"...There's no hazard..."

Swirling its way up along the walls of a worn-out staircase, the stone blocks that made up the inner wall gave off a coarse rattle as it moved up against them like a marble circling the inside of a bowl.

A few of the walls had steep edges, and in the many times the creature had come here over the years, it had learned to expect them and avoid them knocking it out to crash into the ground with a loud plunk, or the heaps of lifeless, dismembered androids on the steps.

"..that'll... stop... me!" it stopped as its voice cracked.

Dodging a few branches as daylight began to take over its view, it finally slid into the top of the watchtower, slamming dead-on into a flagpole wedged into the cedar's bark with a loud clang, and bringing along another little dent next to all the other ones from its previous excursions, drawing a loud cry of pain out of it. "Owchie!"

"A-alright, let's look for my home from here," the sphere, now stiff in its place, coached itself. _All I have to do is find that red oak I live under, or the river right next to it, and_ _ **jump!**_ _I'll get it right… this time!_

Circling the cedar, it passed by a faded pair of underwear with a tear in the middle from being stretched thin. The worn-out fabric was covered in splinters and holes, with moss growing through its largest rupture over the years from the wooden guard fence it was stuck on. The unlit eye of some machine dangled from a bunch of loose, pearly-white threads.

The creature moved along, peering between the beams of the fence to find the odd red spot in the green of the forest. _They say that my oak comes from the other side of the world. I wonder if they buy the seeds of our trees over there? Maybe I should go there someday, and show those night-dwellers what I have in stock!_

Once a small red spot popped up in the corner of its vision, behind the banks of the river, it stopped dead in its tracks, and looked at the outstanding color: the target. _This is it,_ it thought, _the chance to do it right this time._ "Yeah! **This forest's mine!** "

The little tracker rolled up against the fence, and launched off toward a stray plank, corkscrewing up the bottom of a branch and soaring off into the wind at full speed.

The air rushing against it was cold on its shell. The imposing pines, viewed from above now blended together and moved like neat fibers on a sliding carpet under its eyes.

_Just the right amount of roll, and I can fly even further up…_

The sphere rolled back and surged further up in the air, before slamming against the beak of a bird. A painful sting and a loud bang ensued; a screek and a scream sounded off of each other in the air. "So..rry!" the creature faintly whimpered, spinning dizzily out of control.

With a loud thud, the rolling little trader fell smack-dab between a pair of tree branches, hunched down under its weight. _Urgh... I feel so sick right now._

…

 _Do I smell… something unusual, yet familiar? It… it's my cousin! Oh man, what have I found?_ What was a moment of quiet recovery quickly turned into a sneak peek at what seemed like the discovery of the century, as it turned to look at the trunk of the tree it fell down from. _This one has an arrow carved into it! I wonder where it leads?_

The trader rolled gently down the path along the arrow, avoiding hard spots in the loam and fallen tree trunks to make as little noise as it could. Arrows and triangles, all pointing in the same direction, were carved on every other tree it came across. Voices crescendoed in the distance, and a repugnant tang germinated from away as the creature followed the directions engraved. _W-who do these voices belong to? Does my cousin have siblings?!_

A giddy, girlish voice came from behind a small shed made of scraps of junk and metal plates. "Look, our stranger is an artist! Do you know these places, Tenna?" _Huh? My cousin's tongue sounds a lot more raspy and hissy…_

"Hmm? Some base, perhaps?" There was the other voice. Deeper, more subdued, yet still feminine.

The creature froze in place for a split second, and caught a glimpse of an empty entrance. _Are they… looking for someone? I gotta hide!_

It rolled at a turtle's pace over the grass and gently snuck up the slope into the grody interior. _This smells like that time a boar wet itself while I was under it—Awgh, I think ants are crawling all over me!_

Its voice quavered as it remained in place, peeking through a tiny slit in the walls. Two charcoal figures stood out against the daylight, and it listened patiently to their whispers.

"Jeez, Fives, it's a bit dingy in here. Sorry for the wait by the way, had to deal with some hostiles in the air on my flight here..."

"It's alright, I'm just glad you're here—Oh!"

The creature froze in place, and felt its shell freezing over for a brief moment.

"POD, how long ago was this shelter made?"

 _...Phew! Thought she was onto me!_ it sighed as it turned towards the drawer, and slowly rolled towards it.

While the creature inside slowly pulled on the drawer's handle with its teeth to open it, a masculine voice, almost entirely flat and electronic surged up. " _Analysis: Based on the stability of this assortment of machine and junk parts, and the difference in grime between the strata, the most likely length of completion for this structure is 8 to 12 weeks._ "

The drawer opened with a light creak. _No, my senses aren't smelling anything here..._

"So he set up a camp here, and left not a while back."

"What does this have to do with the dead soldier?"

"I don't know, but my intuition tells me something's off… it's as if only I can feel a link."

The creature turned to look at the bed of leaves by its side, and sifted through the pile, only to find nothing but dust, dead skin and scattered hairs. _Oh crud, there's a feast for the ants!_

_Well, there's nothing here. Gotta roll before I catch the heat!_

It rolled out of the couple square feet that made up the interior, and over the grass.

"What do you mean?"

"I was scared when I came here a day ago. So I had called for backup, and 7B appeared. I thought she'd have something to say about this, but she just dragged me out and told me I'm worrying too much. 801S just bragged about other things he's seen when I came back to the Bunker and asked around."

"Hold up-7B… ouch, I remember her. That ponytail of hers is so long I could strangle machines with it."

"You've met her before? I felt strangled after a minute with her."

"Well," the deeper voice chuckled, "it's not hard when she's always trying to make a show of everything, or when she's hauling clouds of perfume and won't wear a standard uniform."

"Clou-Everything? What did she do to you, Tenna?"

"It was at the cafeteria, she took away my plate and put down some sort of stew she made herself. I told her I didn't want it, but she stuck a spoonful in my mouth while everyone was looking, and I couldn't spit it out so she just made me eat through all of it. The B-types say she's great to be around, but I'll say her cooking definitely isn't."

_Footprints! They look like my cousin's. Maybe I should follow them out of here?_

The trader sped out into the boggy soil. Bits and splinters of wood cracked and snapped loudly under its weight, and not a second passed before the voices it had been hearing all spoke at the same time.

" _Alert: unknown presence detected."_

"Tenna, pull out your Fool's Reaper! I just heard a hostile!"

"POD, activate program R050! I'm right on it, Fives!"

Spears of solid light rose one by one swiftly from the ground in front of the creature. Weeds, leaves, worms, ants. All impaled, smoking and burning to a crisp. The crackling of the little flames, the smell of smoke and the spears went from none to all around, and riveted it in place with a shriek.

" **Aaaaaah!** "

The deeper voice sneered from behind. "Shredding doors isn't so bad after all!"

_I'm so glad I don't blink!_

It turned around; the two black figures were now front and center, accompanied by two colored floating rectangles. The taller one's scythe seemed to stretch sky-high from the clouds down onto the ground, covered in lit-up electronics, with the tip scraping down the middle of the creature's face, and commanded it. " **Don't move!** "

_N-nope! Definitely nothing in common with my cousin or Cog! I am not ever doing business with these two!_

The creature squealed, almost as if trying to befriend them. "W-well, hi there, ladies, I'm Emil of the Woo-forget I said that! I don't have a name!"

The shorter one stepped back. A small hand slithered out of her long sleeve and rested on the other's wrist. _Do they see me through those blindfolds?_

"This thing looks weird. Hold it down, I'll try to hack into it." _At least this one doesn't sound as scary as her friend… wait,_ _ **hacking?**_ _I'm not a robot! That doesn't sound good at all!_

"Nooo!" a shrill scream jumped out of its mouth. The girl raised a fist at the trader and flashed halos and runes at its eyes. A searing light flooded in from her wrists, and one last very faint glimpse of the ants crawling all over its eyes was all it had left before it was blinded.

_What's happening to me?!_

A loud clang, thud and thump sounded from nearby. The unmistakable smell of rusty metal suddenly flared its senses.

"Huh?"

The sphere's vision suddenly returned; shortly after, it noticed the flashing lights had stopped. The girls were startled, and they were looking away—towards a dead machine that _must've been impaled on one of those spears… which means the spears are gone?!_

In that one opening it leapt off, rolling between the fading spears and leaving a dust cloud behind, riding on its terrain sailing instincts, the sound of footsteps chasing after it, and the muddled smell of a nearby lake.

_Off to wash this away!_

* * *

The stubby hopped away, following the path back to the outhouse. Not the drop of a pin, not the rustling of a leaf, it wanted not to hear the quietest sound in the world other than the whir of its canter. It whipped its sights back and forth, grabbing its own broken arm to throw at anything that moved as a last-resort security measure.

_I have arrived at my destination. At this moment, it would seem I can safely find my partner in his last known position._

The machine knocked on the door, to check for _whichever minor threats may remain in this building_. To its surprise, the most dangerous thing that occured was a patch of dirt falling off a gutter and dumping on its head and the door, leaving it to try and wipe it off with its good hand before opening it and stepping inside. The interior was dead silent, and a haunted serenity resonated through the wooden furniture.

_I must come closer, to confirm his auditory vital signs._

The bottom of the stairwell was drenched in darkness; the dry-rotted wood on each step looked as if it could snap on the spot from whatever was about to be revealed at the top. As the stubby reached the apex, it saw the man, in his sunburnt skin and torn shirt, face smothering the sleeping bag. Blood stained the white pillow under his nose, and a neat, shallow cut grazed his calf. It grabbed his wrist, and lightly felt his pulse before dropping his hand on the floor.

_The source of this cut is almost clear. To conclude my findings, I must examine the contents of the toolbox located by my partner's head._

With a push of its three pincer-shaped fingers, the half-closed lid slightly chirked up. The sawblade from earlier was inside, bottom drenched in hardened sable blood. The teeth traced piece-for-piece the outline of the man's wound.

_It seems that the resident of this building has much more severe psychological issues than I first suspected. Purposefully attempting to sever my partner's limb and deflecting away from it strongly suggests that he finds in my partner means to an end, and likely not of a practical nature._

The little biped set aside a moment of silence to look down a mouse-sized cable hole in the floor. A small peek of the mechanical body parts heaped upon each other two floors below in the basement, and its beaten legs recoiled as it pictured the man's body parts and viscera in their place, knocking the toolbox over. A staccato of plastic packages and metal banged against the hardwood floor, jolting the machine aback. On the floor, the saw, a bottle of vinegar, band-aids, a pair of tweezers... and most curiously, a long tube in a sealed plastic bag with a hose socket _highly resembling the filter on the water pump._

The open window stood a few steps away, pouring bucketfuls of solar punishment over the pair. Promptly, the machine stepped forward, and grabbed the sill with its good hand to lift itself—barely high enough to gain a view. Pitch-black ashes vied with the enormous shadows of the surrounding trees to drape the few drops of green left on the field in a lifeless monotone. _There is not a single moving entity in sight. It would appear that my hastily-constructed stratagem has turned out exactly as I had hoped._

_The question poses itself now: my partner is heavily injured at this point. Quite likely, in fact, is that these injuries may turn out to be fatal within hours to days. I must find a way to tend to him under the circumstances._

On to its new mission, it braced itself and stood straight, raising its forearm into a right angle. The static-filled ticks of its defective system clock grew louder in its mind as it hopped down the stairs, scoured the living room, the kitchen and the closet, finding the bucket the man had knocked down and emptying a few muddy drops into the cracks between the floorboards.

There was no time to think about transportation; the machine shouldered the pail on its broken arm. Clink. Clank. Bang. The bucket rang like a bell against its leg as it awkwardly galloped to the door, shaking from side to side as it cut through the field to the pump.

_The presence of a waste disposal facility nearby may imply the availability of cleaning tissues. It would be prudent to carry some._

With the hose loosely in the bucket, the smooth reach of its hand for the button was harshly interrupted by a hoarse scream in the distance: it was the resident's gravelly voice.

_It would seem that the risk I have taken has not led to a favorable situation, yet in this instance, it shall not preclude me from attending to a matter of necessity._

After a moment, water poured, splashed, and sprayed over the stubby's arm. The bucket's handle weighed down on its shoulder like a heavy horseshoe; yet the atmosphere to its left was heavier, and its eyes locked onto the egress with its every step and splatter towards the outhouse, gently opening the door. The inside was covered in tracked mud, muck and colorful stains. _As expected, it is fortunately unoccupied. There is a possibility of locating a… less sterile substitute for unavailable bandages within._

Raising a foot to lean and turning its head, a small spot of green beetled from a dark blind spot behind the seat. The stubby swung its foot back, hopping and tripping sideways. Water splashed off on its broken arm's shoulder joint once it stood down again, blowing up a fuse. With a snap, crackle, and scream of pain, a puff of smoke flooded the outhouse. _"Aargh!"_

_I must take more care to be restrained in my movements!_

Its feet treaded gently on the wooden floor of the latrine, dodging dingy corn cobs, and its fingers reached like needles through a house of cards under a pipe, pulling out a roll of toilet paper and inspecting it.

_It is quite clean and looks much less worn-out than the rest of this waste disposal chamber._

_I have always believed this roll of paper to have been used by humans for cleaning body waste, yet it appears completely unused. It may be pertinent to inquire of my partner later as to how he has used this._

It hopped out of the outhouse, carrying the roll on its broken arm and the bucket in the other.

_...It would seem that cleaning the stain off of this door would aid in covering my tracks._

The roll trembled in its hand, being pulled off of the broken arm. The cardboard inside neatly fit on the door's handle. A few squares were soaked in the bucket, and it wiped the dirt stains off to drop the bucket in the living room, take the roll and toss it on the dinner table, shut the door, and reached out for the stove and kitchen cabinets. A bluster ensued of slides, creaks and silverware pieces banging to find a salt shaker, open the stove's gas cylinder, light a fire, open the nearby window, put the bucket to boil and salted the water.

The bucket wheezed and whistled; the machine's circuits simmered quietly yet more vibrantly than the water. Its legs impatiently bounced to look at the window with each passing second, lest the resident return carrying a rifle loaded with white-hot energy, in his arms fueled with white-hot rancor.

The floor creaked under the tumult of its gears, growing louder until a sound from the attic froze it in place. It left the fire on, grabbed the bucket off of the stove by its handle, held it against its chest and inched as quietly as possible towards the stairs, creeping up before finding the man, having twitched and rolled over.

_A relief._

A light gurgle escaped his throat, turning to painful moaning as his back rubbed against the ground. The stubby dropped the bucket lightly with its warmed fingers, and softly nudged him back on his stomach.

It poured a few drops of the vinegar into the water, and put down the roll. Downstairs, it shut the gas, put the salt back, slammed the window shut, closed the cabinets, and hopped back up.

One by one, it pinched squares and dunked them in the sterilized saltwater to rinse the man's wounds, making sure to return every item and the toolbox to its former place. The last of the paper was exhausted covering the red pasture of bloodied cuts, pus and abrasions on the man's back in white with toilet paper and pulling his shirt down before it scuttled off to the black field of ashes and burnt crops outside.

The resident crawled out of the woodwork, slumping with tears and scratches all over his armor suit. Fibers of kevlar hung loosely from his charred tatters; his stature had been cut in half, weighed down by his rifle in his hand and reduced to a slumping canvas dripping red, orange, cyan and black splashes. His pouches and holster were torn off—like cotton candy bitten by feral children, yet his hand clamped down on something with its juices leaking between his fingers. "Machine, this wi..ll be for you to pick up." he whimpered, drained of his strength before tossing a slab of boar meat for the stubby to grab.

* * *

_...There is no fucking James here!_

The man woke up, feeling his legs warmly tucked inside the fabric of the sleeping bag.

_My face, it's so cold… it's wet?_

_Gear! Help me get the fuck out of here… Cog?_

The man opened his eyes, slowly adjusting to the soft brownish hues of the ceiling and the glowy floating particles in the heavy air, his sluggish breath barely keeping up with his lungs. He scratched his beard. Several glasses with a few spilled drops of water by his side laid an inch from his head, reflecting his face. His scars were many, and had the bushes outside been a recruiting gang, his uneven hair would have been well past the initiation phase and on its way to veteranhood.

He almost could not believe his ears; there was no machine alarm sound. There were no chants, no shocks, no explosions, and no fire outside the four walls of this dead-quiet, lifeless cell of an attic. The fanfare within him, however, was far from over: save for his back which had been gagged into silence with toilet paper, his limbs all vied for attention, hectically turns shrieking in agony in the theater of his brain each louder than the other. His wandering mind turned into a cloud of white noise, as he pressed his arms on the ground to stand himself up as slowly as he could, letting out a wet cough. His next inhale brought in an unexpected, yet welcome guest: the rich smell of grilled meat leading the aroma of sweetcorn. His hand on the stair railing moved in bursts along with his shaky trudge down the stairs.

A thought makes past the barrage of fog in his head for the first time. _...Should I take the meat if it's Friday? No… that question doesn't even make any fucking sense._

With his free hand, he crossed himself before hearing the sound of plates and silverware knocking on a table, and finished his way down. The stranger, out of his usual suit and the stubby were putting plates down and setting chairs for breakfast, as he greeted the man in a somewhat reassuring tone. "Good morning." He was in a brown flannel shirt, with a conspicuous white breast pocket.

The man twisted his tongue a couple times while debating whether to respond in kind or stay silent. "Good morning to you?"

The man sat awkwardly at the end of the table furthest from the stranger, resting his hands beside the plate in front of him, and sighed in relief as the seat felt more comfortable than he'd expected. _More like Palm Sunday._

While the resident cleaned a pan at the sink, the man cast a quick glance at his partner, standing halfway across the table from him, who had just put a glass of water down on the table. _You son of a bitch, you're gonna be my buffer state for now._ He waved towards the stubby, and it quietly turned its head to face him. With his thumb, he gestured to the meal as if eating with a fork, and then raised it to his mouth before shifting his head down to the side with his tongue out, then sitting straight again and raising his shoulders and palms. _I hope this smartass gets the question._

" _No."_ it answered, loud enough to ring the man's ears in its monotone.

The stranger immediately shut the water and turned, with a nearly-palpable sense of alarm in his voice. "What?"

The stubby immediately turned around without skipping a second. _"My apologies. I intended to instruct my partner not to eat before you would sit with us at the table."_

_Holy shit. Might as well just have eaten until I started foaming and turning green when this dumb fucking screwshaft is who's ment to be looking out for me._

Once the resident sat, the machine hopped on its seat. The man stuck his eyes to his plate, and the machine stayed still. A paper-thin tranquility pervaded through the dinner table. He brought the glass of water slightly closer to himself and toyed with the knife, carving out bone fragments and casting them to the side of the plate after every other bite. _Sure wish I had some fry sauce right here. No flavor to this stuff. Things are fairly calm in here for once-_

_...What if, instead of poisoning me, he was gonna drag my ass behind the outhouse right after we were done and shoot my brains out? What if he wanted to rape me for real this time? What if he was gonna use my organs as fertilizer for his next harvest? What the fuck is this moron right next to me thinking?_

After forking a bite of corn and meat, and dipping it in the last puddle of fat on his dish, his hand freezes, and his fearful shunt makes way for a decisive stare. Moving his jaw around, he finally puts the words together. "Listen, I'm sorry for the fire. I swear, I was gonna come back and te-"

The resident, who had been quietly whorfing down his share, suddenly snapped and slammed his knife down leaving the man to flinch in his chair. The knife bounced and did a backflip, crossing over and sliding into the man's half of the table. " **I know! I know!** No one has to tell me what I know! **It was that thieving bitch son!** " his goggles flickered, searing floating spots into the man's retina.

_Jesus fucking Christ, I can't see shit for the next quarter hour with these spots!_

_...Alright, alright, so he doesn't think it was me. But there's enough crazy to go around in the Proenneke house that it won't make a difference. Good to know._

The machine interjected, to fill in the man's silence. _"What do you suppose is the identity of your suspect?"_

"That bastard sphere! My items, my schematics, my belongings are always disappeared because his wide smile on that disgusting face swallows it all up in front me!" he stood up, and kicked his chair into the wall so hard it snapped into pieces. "That no-good **bastard!** "

The man turned to the machine twice: once out of concern, and once out of anger after he'd realized whose description he was hearing. His glower said all that his mouth could not at that moment. _You son of a bitch. This is who you trusted? The same piece of shit ballkid that_ _ **left me here to die because your dumbass can't even save your own life properly?**_

The target of his shafts of rage quickly seemed to fire back; its eyes shifted red for a moment without even turning its head to look at either of the two others in the living room. _Wait, ah shit! He's on to me again! I can't leave now and get my ass cheeks torn apart by Drill Sergeant over there!_

The resident shouted at the top of his lungs, his fists clenched and shaking. "I have been robbed for years since I came to hide in this house! I can never see him coming until I hear his embarrassments that are called songs by him!"

_Wha..what the hell did that sentence even mean?_

The man felt a slight shot of bile soar up his throat, and forced himself to finish the last munch and few grains of corn on his plate, gluing his eyes to the furious predicant in front of him. "I… urgh."

"All the time! He is doing it all the time and now tried to kill us! I will find him! Next time, I will find him! I will never forgive this!" The resident panted and ran upstairs. The duo downstairs exchanged stares for a moment to the sound of metal clanking and sliding upstairs.

_**What the…? Fuck this, I'm out! I'm all solo now!** _

The creak of a lever suddenly electrified the atmosphere. The man stood up and made a beeline for the window by the stove, tripped and latched on to the sink. He looked over his shoulder; the resident had come downstairs and completely ignored him before kicking the front door open and storming out.

The man turned on the sink, and turned around. The running water drowned out his whispered message to the stubby, even in his own ears. _"Water is a limited resource in this residence,"_ the machine interrupted his train of thought. _Fuck._

He shut the tap off, and came closer to his partner. "Upstairs. Go."

A moment later, he sat down on the sleeping bag, clasped his hands on his lap, and folded his knees, biting his nails in front of the stubby.

" _My hearing detects that the owner of this dwelling is far enough for us to speak safely."_

He clutched his chest before his tense posture relaxed slightly to throw a glance at the window. Once his eyes were again with the stubby, his frown tightened and he let out every thought on his mind at that moment. "What is up with this weirdo? Actually, what is up with your friends? If you wanted to kill me, why are you doing it like this? Why not fucking let me choke till my eyes pop out on that fucking gallows in Robopodunk? Because I've seen enough shit now."

" _De-"_

"I'm serious. If you want to kill me, do it now, bitch."

" _Derrick. Please."_

_That is the first fucking time I have heard you say that word. Ever._

"Alright, alright," he drew a deep breath, "listen, my joints are like water balloons and I had a fucked up dream today."

" _So be it, then. Tell me if you judge that doing so will help you calm down."_

"I was running through that same fucking fire again, and on the other side, there was my school. My friends from the sports team were there, they were in some kinda cloud. And I saw some withered body crawl towards me. Don't know how, but I knew she was my ex-girlfriend."

" _Is there any information about human sexual encounters you would like to share, Derrick?"_

"Fuck you, I never had one," his tone erupted briefly, followed by a second of silence.

"...anyway, my father was there too. And the closer she got, the more my body just started cracking and falling into pieces from the bottom up. Then my genitals, I guess, fell off. My friends' faces all disappeared. My dad's face showed up on my girlfriend's black skinny corpse, and he made rain sink everything into the ground until my head was level with his. And then he said: James, you're standing on the family's remains."

" _James? Is that an acquaintance of yours?"_

He lightly shook his head, and his tone went quieter. "No, nah, that doesn't mean anything. I'm just upset about this." He blinked twice and licked the roof of his mouth. "I don't even feel right thinking about jerking off anymore with these," he closed his eyes in silence for a moment, "images in my head." before tilting down to look at his moving thumbs.

" _I see,"_ the machine commented. _"There are pressing matters of which I must inform you."_

Frown faded, then a sigh softened his voice. "Shoot."

" _This home is much less safe than you may be aware. The owner has attempted to mutilate you during your loss of consciousness, by amputating your leg."_

The man raised an eyebrow, and his tone showed a growing worry. "Why in the world… was he going to chain me here like a dog?"

" _It seems that he had been intent on using it to make up for his supply shortage, and use it as a source of nutrients. It is also important that you not be misled by his claims: he is absolutely not human, but he is an android."_

"Christ!," his hands tensed and pulled back his shirt sleeves, "I am so fucked up!"

" _I do not intend to kill you, Derrick. Far from it, I have attempted to remove you from harm to the best of my abilities under the circumstances."_

After a moment of brief reflection, the man looked agape at his partner. "So that's… where the toilet paper came from. Wait, where did you fi-"

A whirlwind of air burst into the attic from the window, and a familiar voice chimed. The duo quickly twisted their heads; it was the little spherical creature with its usual eerie smiley face.

Red-faced, the American clenched his fists, put them on the ground, and scowled. "You moose-humping little shit! I'll kill you!" His shouting might as well have been a whistle in the wind; for a conversation had already started between the two before he could react, one in this world's language.

**TRANSLATION SOFTWARE ACTIVATED. Setting: ██████ to English.**

"Heya Cog! Emil of the Woods here, I brought ya some…news...er, that clock part you wanted!" The creature was rock-still, but its voice had quite the wobble.

" _Thank you, Emil. You have failed to live up to the standards of decency I had expected from you."_

" **Hey! You left me here to die! I almost got my leg cut off!"** the man interjected, shouting.

"Wha," the creature stammered, "h-what? Cog, I'm sorry, I-"

" _You have repeatedly engaged me, and my entire colony in counter-civilizational behavior without even our consent. This is a violation of our community's principles."_

The man shouted at the stubby. **"Speak up for me! I want this kid to learn I'm not the local toy here!"**

"I didn't do anything to hurt people! And, and.. look! I thought you and my cousin would be safe here!"

" _Regardless of how you feel about your intentions, that is not an acceptable excuse. You have been selling stolen goods. It is this fact that voids your legitimacy as a trader. Your reckless actions have endangered me and the human."_

"O-oh.. oh! This guy! I stole from him a lot but he deserved it, you know-"

" _I do not preoccupy myself with these fickle judgments when applying my standards, Emil. As I do not expect you to return this system clock or tell me truthfully whence you have acquired it,-"_

"Uh.."

" _-I ask that you simply drop it here. Yet, as it remains, I will honor my contract with you as soon as I am able to access my earnings once more."_

"No, no," the creature's voice quieted down to a much frailer tone, and its pace slowed. "This one's… on the house. I'm so sorry for," it let out a sob, "for what I did." Before long, it opened his mouth, and spat out a chip at the machine. "Goodbye," it flew off, speeding away in a cloud of dust into the distance.

**TRANSLATION SOFTWARE DEACTIVATED.**

The man huffed and puffed, and leaned against the wall. "So what's this little chip? And did you speak up for me? Actually, what'd you even talk about?"

" _I have done that and more. You need not worry, Derrick. This is the system clock I will need. As there are no qualified maintenance units nearby, I will have to instruct you to properly install it in my system."_

A light patter was heard in the distance. _"This operation will demand your utmost focus. We may have to wait, however, until it is reasonably safe to perform maintenance without any disruptive agents_ , _"_ the stubby murmured.

The man looked at the staircase, and whispered back. "Speaking of which, I've got a plan. Because I am so fucking done running from every shadow I see or waiting around to die. No, we're gonna take a fucking stand here."


End file.
